High-precision nuclear chronometer for the cosmos

Abstract

Nuclear chronometer, which predicts the ages of the oldest stars by comparing the present and initial abundances of long-lived radioactive nuclides, provides an independent dating technique for the cosmos. A new nuclear chronometer called Th-U-X chronometer is proposed, which imposes stringent constraints on the astrophysical conditions in the $r$-process simulation by synchronizing the previous Th/X, U/X and Th/U chronometers. The astrophysical uncertainties of nuclear chronometer are significantly reduced from more than $\pm 2$ billion years to within 0:3 billion years by the Th-U-X chronometer. The proposed chronometer is then applied to estimate the ages of the six metal-poor stars with observed uranium abundances, and the predicted ages are compatible with the cosmic age 13.8 billion years predicted from the cosmic microwave background radiation, but in contradictory with the new cosmic age 11.4 billion years from the gravitational lenses measurement.

5 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Principal components of nuclear mass models
• Correlation between U/Th and Pb/Os abundance ratios and its application in nuclear cosmochronology
• Impact of nuclear mass models on $r$-process nucleosynthesis and heavy element abundances in $r$-process enhanced metal-poor stars
• Exploratory study on the masses of odd-$Z$ nuclei and $r$-process simulation based on the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum
• Principal Components of Nuclear Mass Model Residuals