Who Pulled the Trigger: a Supernova or an AGB Star?

Abstract

The short-lived radioisotope ${}^{60}$Fe requires production in a core collapse supernova or AGB star immediately before its incorporation into the earliest solar system solids. Shock waves from a somewhat distant supernova, or a relatively nearby AGB star, have the right speeds to simultaneously trigger the collapse of a dense molecular cloud core and to inject shock wave material into the resulting protostar. A new set of FLASH2.5 adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamical models shows that the injection efficiency depends sensitively on the assumed shock thickness and density. Supernova shock waves appear to be thin enough to inject the amount of shock wave material necessary to match the short-lived radioisotope abundances measured for primitive meteorites. Planetary nebula shock waves from AGB stars, however, appear to be too thick to achieve the required injection efficiencies. These models imply that a supernova pulled the trigger that led to the formation of our solar system.

14 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Astrophysical Journal Letters, in press

References in corpus (3)

• Dust Formation and Survival in Supernova Ejecta
• Simultaneous Triggered Collapse of the Presolar Dense Cloud Core and Injection of Short-Lived Radioisotopes by a Supernova Shock Wave
• Injection of Short-Lived Radionuclides into the Early Solar System from a Faint Supernova with Mixing-Fallback

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Solar system genealogy revealed by extinct short-lived radionuclides in meteorites
• Radioactive nuclei from cosmochronology to habitability
• Volatile Delivery to Planets from Water-rich Planetesimals around Low Mass Stars
• A Critical Examination of the X-Wind Model for Chondrule and Calcium-rich, Aluminum-rich Inclusion Formation and Radionuclide Production
• The Supernova Triggered Formation and Enrichment of Our Solar System
• Are exoplanetesimals differentiated?
• Short-lived radioisotopes in meteorites from Galactic-scale correlated star formation
• Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
• Mixing of Clumpy Supernova Ejecta into Molecular Clouds
• Evidence from stable isotopes and Be-10 for solar system formation triggered by a low-mass supernova
• A deep wide-field sub-mm survey of the Carina Nebula complex
• Short-lived radioactivity in the early Solar System: the Super-AGB star hypothesis
• Black Hole Mass, Host galaxy classification and AGN activity
• Cosmochemical Consequences of Particle Trajectories During FU Orionis Outbursts by the Early Sun
• Evolution of the Solar Nebula. IX. Gradients in the Spatial Heterogeneity of the Short-Lived Radioisotopes ${}^{60}$Fe and ${}^{26}$Al and the Stable Oxygen Isotopes
• Triggered Star Formation and Its Consequences
• Triggering Collapse of the Presolar Dense Cloud Core and Injecting Short-Lived Radioisotopes with a Shock Wave. II. Varied Shock Wave and Cloud Core Parameters
• Post-Newtonian Jeans analysis
• Chemical enrichment of the pre-solar cloud by supernova dust grains
• Triggering Collapse of the Presolar Dense Cloud Core and Injecting Short-Lived Radioisotopes with a Shock Wave. V. Nonisothermal Collapse Regime
• Hydrodynamic ablation of protoplanetary disks via supernovae
• Triggering Collapse of the Presolar Dense Cloud Core and Injecting Short-Lived Radioisotopes with a Shock Wave. VI. Protostar and Protoplanetary Disk Formation
• The interaction of hydrodynamic shocks with self-gravitating clouds
• Possible Implications of Relatively High Levels of Initial ${}^{60}$Fe in Iron Meteorites for the Non-Carbonaceous -- Carbonaceous Meteorite Dichotomy and Solar Nebula Formation
• Nuclear astrophysics
• Chemical complexity in star formation induced by stellar feedback: cores shock-formed by the supernova remnant W44
• Cosmic Radioactivity and Galactic Chemical Evolution