The galactic evolution of neutron star mergers and their possible effect on the galactic chemical enrichment of r-process elements

Abstract

A population number synthesis code follows in detail the evolution of a population of single stars and of close binaries. We use our code to simulate the population of neutron star - neutron star and black hole - neutron star binaries. We then combine our population number synthesis code with a galactic chemical evolutionary model in order to follow the time evolution of the formation and merger rate of these double compact star binaries and the resulting chemical enrichment of r-process elements, over the whole Galactic lifetime. It can be concluded that the neutron star/black hole merger process is able to reproduce the observed r-process enrichment of the Galaxy. However, we show that the latter conclusion depends critically on the physics of case BB Roche lobe overflow in binaries with a neutron star component and a hydrogen deficient core helium/helium shell burning star with a mass between 2.6 Mo and 6 Mo.