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Lithium evolution from Pre-Main Sequence to the Spite plateau: an environmental solution to the cosmological lithium problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2016

Xiaoting Fu
Affiliation:
SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy email: [email protected], [email protected]
Alessandro Bressan
Affiliation:
SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy email: [email protected], [email protected]
Paolo Molaro
Affiliation:
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via G. B. Tiepolo 11, 34143 Trieste, Italy email: [email protected]
Paola Marigo
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 2, I-35122 Padova, Italy email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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Lithium abundance derived in metal-poor main sequence stars is about three times lower than the primordial value of the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis prediction. This disagreement is referred to as the lithium problem. We reconsider the stellar Li evolution from the pre-main sequence to the end of main sequence phase by introducing the effects of overshooting and residual mass accretion. We show that 7Li could be significantly depleted by convective overshooting in the pre-main sequence phase and then partially restored in the stellar atmosphere by residual accretion which follows the Li depletion phase and could be regulated by EUV photo-evaporation. By considering the conventional nuclear burning and diffusion along the main sequence we can reproduce the Spite plateau for stars with initial mass m0=0.62–0.80 M, and the Li declining branch for lower mass dwarfs, e.g, m0=0.57–0.60 M, for a wide range of metallicities (Z=0.00001 to Z=0.0005), starting from an initial Li abundance A(Li) = 2.72.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

References

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