Stochastic Chemical Evolution of Radioactive Isotopes with a Monte Carlo Approach

Abstract

Short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) with mean lives τ of a few to hundreds of Myr provide unique opportunities to probe recent nucleosynthesis events in the interstellar medium and the physical conditions in which the Sun formed. Here we quantify the uncertainty in the predicted evolution of SLRs within a parcel of interstellar gas given the stochastic nature of stellar enrichment events. We assume that an enrichment progenitor is formed at every time interval γ . For each progenitor, we randomly sample the delay time between its formation and its enrichment event, based on several delay-time distribution (DTD) functions that cover a wide range of astrophysical sites. For each set of τ , γ , and DTD functions, we follow the abundances of SLRs for 15 Gyr and repeat this process thousands of times to derive their probability distributions. For τ / γ  ≳ 2, the distributions depend on the DTD function, and we provide tabulated values and analytical expressions to quantify the spread. The relative abundance uncertainty reaches a maximum of ∼60% for τ / γ  = 1. For τ / γ  ≲ 1, we provide the probability for the SLR abundance to carry the signature of only one enrichment event, which is greater than 50% when τ / γ  ≲ 0.3. For 0.3 ≲  τ / γ  ≲ 2, a small number of events contributed to the SLR abundance. This case needs to be investigated with a separate statistical method. We find that an isolation time for the birth of the Sun of roughly 9–13 Myr is consistent with the observed abundances of 60 Fe, 107 Pd, and 182 Hf in the early solar system when assuming τ / γ  ∼ 3 for these isotopes.