Halo Star Lithium Depletion

Abstract

The depletion of lithium during the pre-main sequence and main sequence phases of stellar evolution plays a crucial role in the comparison of the predictions of big bang nucleosynthesis with the abundances observed in halo stars. In the past a wide range of possible depletion factors, ranging from minimal in standard (non-rotating) stellar models to as much as an order of magnitude in models including rotational mixing have been suggested. Using recent progress in the study of the angular momentum evolution of low mass stars, which now permits the construction of theoretical models that reproduce the angular momentum evolution of low mass open cluster stars, along with the observed distribution of initial angular momenta inferred from stellar rotation data in young open clusters, we study lithium depletion in main sequence halo stars. We predict a well-defined, nearly flat (in Teff) halo lithium plateau with modest scatter and a small population of outliers. We also examine the relative depletions of 6Li and 7Li finding that the dispersion in the plateau and the 6Li/7Li depletion ratio scale with the absolute 7Li depletion. Using observational data to bound the 7Li depletion in main sequence halo stars, we find a maximum depletion of 0.4 dex is set by the observed dispersion and the 6Li/7Li depletion ratio, and a minimum depletion of 0.2 dex is required by both the presence of highly overdepleted halo stars and consistency with the solar and open cluster 7Li data. The cosmological implications of these bounds on the primordial abundance of 7Li are discussed. (Abridged)