Heavy element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST

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Date
2023-10-25
Authors
Levan, Andrew
Gompertz, Benjamin P.
Salafia, Om Sharan
Bulla, Mattia
Burns, Eric
Hotokezaka, Kenta
Izzo, Luca
Lamb, Gavin P.
Malesani, Daniele B.
Oates, Samantha R.
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Springer Nature Switzerland AG
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Abstract
The mergers of binary compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes are of central interest to several areas of astrophysics, including as the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)1, sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GW)2 and likely production sites for heavy element nucleosynthesis via rapid neutron capture (the r-process)3. Here we present observations of the exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst GRB 230307A. We show that GRB 230307A belongs to the class of long-duration gamma-ray bursts associated with compact object mergers4–6, and contains a kilonova similar to AT2017gfo, associated with the gravitational-wave merger GW1708177–12. We obtained James Webb Space Telescope mid-infrared (mid-IR) imaging and spectroscopy 29 and 61 days after the burst. The spectroscopy shows an emission line at 2.15 microns which we interpret as tellurium (atomic mass A=130), and a very red source, emitting most of its light in the mid-IR due to the production of lanthanides. These observations demonstrate that nucleosynthesis in GRBs can create r-process elements across a broad atomic mass range and play a central role in heavy element nucleosynthesis across the Universe.
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Nucleosynthesis , Gamma-ray burst , r-process elements , Heavy element nucleosynthesis
Citation
Levan, A., Gompertz, B.P., Salafia, O.S. et al. (2023) 'Heavy element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST', Nature, 626, pp. 737-741. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06759-1
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© 2023, The Authors, under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published as: Levan, A., Gompertz, B.P., Salafia, O.S. et al. (2023) 'Heavy element production in a compact object merger observed by JWST', Nature, doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06759-1. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06759-1