1999/12/20 by Daniel Thomas, Thomas, Daniel, Laura Greggio +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9912416
6 pages, 2 figs., to appear in 'The chemical evolution of the Milky Way: stars vs clusters', F. Giovannelli & F. Matteucci, proceedings of the Vulcano Workshop, Sep. 1999
arxiv created 1999/12/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Uncertainties in stellar nucleosynthesis and their impact on models of chemical evolution are discussed. Comparing the Type II supernova nucleosynthesis prescriptions from Woosley & Weaver (1995) and Thielemann, Nomoto, & Hashimoto (1996), it turns out that the latter predict higher Mg/Fe ratios that are more favorable in reproducing the observed abundance features of the Milky Way. Provided that chemical evolution models are calibrated on the solar neighborhood, they offer a powerful tool to constrain structure formation. In particular, galaxy formation models that yield star formation histories significantly longer than 1 Gyr fail to reproduce the super-solar Mg/Fe ratios observed in elliptical galaxies.