Astron. Astrophys. 346, 686-698 (1999)

Spallative nucleosynthesis in supernova remnants

II. Time-dependent numerical results

Etienne Parizot and Luke Drury

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 5 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland (parizot, ld@cp.dias.ie)

Received 1 February 1999 / Accepted 12 March 1999

Abstract

We calculate the spallative production of light elements associated with the explosion of an isolated supernova in the interstellar medium, using a time-dependent model taking into account the dilution of the ejected enriched material and the adiabatic energy losses. We first derive the injection function of energetic particles (EPs) accelerated at both the forward and the reverse shock, as a function of time. Then we calculate the Be yields obtained in both cases and compare them to the value implied by the observational data for metal-poor stars in the halo of our Galaxy, using both O and Fe data. We find that none of the processes investigated here can account for the amount of Be found in these stars, which confirms the analytical results of Parizot & Drury (1999). We finally analyze the consequences of these results for Galactic chemical evolution, and suggest that a model involving superbubbles might alleviate the energetics problem in a quite natural way.

Key words: acceleration of particles nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances ISM: supernova remnants Galaxy: abundances

Send offprint requests to: E. Parizot

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Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Why we need to do time-dependent calculations
  • 2.1. EPs accelerated at the forward shock
  • 2.2. EPs accelerated at the reverse shock
• 3. Description of the theoretical and numerical model
  • 3.1. The mathematical formalism and the physical ingredients
  • 3.2. The injection function at the forward shock
  • 3.3. The injection function at the reverse shock
  • 3.4. The formal solution for the EP distribution function
• 4. The results
  • 4.1. LiBeB production by the EPs from the forward shock
  • 4.2. LiBeB production by the EPs from the reverse shock
• 5. Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• References

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999

Online publication: May 21, 1999
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