2006/05/24 by Emmanuel Rollinde, Elisabeth Vangioni, Keith A. Olive · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/507580
published as Astrophys.J.651:658-666,2006 · 9 pages 8 figures
arxiv created 2006/05/24 · openalex publication_date 2006/11/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We calculate the evolution of 6 Li generated from cosmic rays produced by an early population of massive stars. The computation is performed in the framework of hierarchical structure formation and is based on cosmic star formation histories constrained to reproduce the observed star formation rate at redshift z ≲ 6 and the observed chemical abundances both in damped Lyα absorbers and in the intergalactic medium, and to allow for an early reionization of the universe at z ~ 11 by Population III stars as indicated by the third year results released by WMAP . We show that the pregalactic production of the 6 Li isotope in the IGM via these Population III stars can account for the 6 Li plateau observed in metal-poor halo stars without additional overproduction of 7 Li. Our results depend on the efficiency of cosmic rays to propagate out of minihalos and the fraction of supernova energy deposited in cosmic rays. We also compute the cosmic-ray heating of the IGM gas. In general, we find somewhat high temperatures (of order 10 5 K), implying that the cosmic rays production of 6 Li may be required to be confined to the so-called warm-hot IGM.