The Impact of Initial Composition on Massive Star Evolution and Nucleosynthesis

TL;DR

This study investigates how initial stellar composition affects massive star evolution and nucleosynthesis, finding that a galactic chemical history model better matches observed nucleosynthesis yields and impacts galactic chemical evolution predictions.

Contribution

The paper introduces a comparison of initial compositions from scaled solar and galactic chemical history models, showing the latter's superiority in reproducing nucleosynthesis features and providing an updated model for future research.

Findings

GCH model better reproduces weak s-process peak.

Initial composition impacts galactic chemical evolution more than burn network.

Updated GCH model verified with machine learning.

Abstract

We study the sensitivity of presupernova evolution and supernova nucleosynthesis yields of massive stars to variations of the initial composition. We use the solar abundances from Lodders (2009), and compute two different initial stellar compositions: i) scaled solar abundances, and ii) the isotopic galactic chemical history model (GCH) developed by West and Heger (2013b). We run a grid of models using the KEPLER stellar evolution code, with 7 initial stellar masses, 12 initial metallicities, and two for each scaling method to explore the effects on nucleosynthesis over a metallicity range of $-4.0\leq[Z]\leq+0.3$. We find that the compositions from the GCH model better reproduce the weak \emph{s}-process peak than the scaled solar models. The model yields are then used in the OMEGA Galactic Chemical Evolution (GCE) code to assess this result further. We find that initial abundances used in computing stellar structure have more of an impact on GCE results than initial abundances used in the burn network, with the GCH model again being favored when compared to observations. Lastly, a machine learning algorithm was used to verify the free parameter values of the GCH model, which were previously found by West and Heger (2013b) using a stochastic fitting process. The updated model is provided as an accessible tool for further nucleosynthesis studies.