https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-023-00968-y
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Representation of s-process abundances for comparison to data from bulk meteorites
1
Konkoly Observatory, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), Konkoly Thege M. út 15-17, 1121, Budapest, Hungary
2
CSFK, MTA Centre of Excellence, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15-17, 1121, Budapest, Hungary
3
Institute of Physics, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, 1117, Budapest, Hungary
4
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, 3800, Clayton, VIC, Australia
5
Institute for Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
6
E. A. Milne Centre for Astrophysics, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, HU6 7RX, Kingston upon Hull, UK
7
Centre for Star and Planet Formation (StarPlan), Globe Institute, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5-7, 1350, Copenhagen K, Denmark
Received:
10
October
2022
Accepted:
28
February
2023
Published online:
21
March
2023
Analysis of bulk meteorite compositions has revealed small isotopic variations due to the presence of material (e.g., stardust) that preserved the signature of nuclear reactions occurring in specific stellar sites. The interpretation of such anomalies provides evidence for the environment of the birth of the Sun, its accretion process, the evolution of the solar proto-planetary disk, and the formation of the planets. A crucial element of such interpretation is the comparison of the observed anomalies to predictions from models of stellar nucleosynthesis. To date, however, this comparison has been limited to a handful of model predictions. This is mostly because the calculated stellar abundances need to be transformed into a specific representation, which nuclear astrophysicists and stellar nucleosynthesis researchers are not familiar with. Here, we show in detail that this representation is needed to account for mass fractionation effects in meteorite data that can be generated both in nature and during instrumental analysis. We explain the required internal normalisation to a selected isotopic ratio, describe the motivations behind such representation more widely, and provide the tools to perform the calculations. Then, we present some examples considering two elements produced by the slow neutron-capture (s) process: Sr and Mo. We show which specific representations for the Sr isotopic composition calculated by s-process models better disentangle the nucleosynthetic signatures from stars of different metallicity. For Mo, the comparison between data and models is improved due to a recent re-analysis of the 
Mo neutron-capture cross section.
© The Author(s) 2023
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