The Galactic Chemical Evolution of Chlorine

Galactic Chemical Evolution

The primary present-day observables upon which theories of galaxy evolution are based are a system's morphology, dynamics, colour, and chemistry. Individually, each provides an important constraint to any given model; in concert, the four represent a fundamental (intractable) boundary condition for chemody-namical simulations. We review the current state-of-the-art semi-analytical and chemodyna...

The Chemical Evolution of the Galactic Bulge

On the galactic chemical evolution of sulfur

Sulfur abundances have been determined for ten stars to resolve a debate in the literature on the Galactic chemical evolution of sulfur in the halo phase of the Milky Way. Our analysis is based on observations of the S i lines at 9212.9, 9228.1, and 9237.5 Å for stars for which the S abundance was obtained previously from much weaker S i lines at 8694.0 and 8694.6 Å. In contrast to the previous...

The Galactic Habitable Zone I. Galactic Chemical Evolution

We propose the concept of a ”Galactic Habitable Zone” (GHZ). Analogous to the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ), the GHZ is that region in the Milky Way where an Earth-like planet can retain liquid water on its surface and provide a long-term habitat for animal-like aerobic life. In this paper we examine the dependence of the GHZ on Galactic chemical evolution. The single most important factor...

Galactic chemical evolution of Ba-peak elements

The chemical evolution of the Galaxy is followed for the elements affected by neutron capture, in particular for those in the atomic number range 56 to 63 (Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm and Eu). Neutrons by the major C source, released in radiative conditions in the interpulse periods of TP-AGB stars, give rise to an efficient s-processing, making low mass AGB the major contributors to the chemical ev...