Parallel sessions

The chemical evolution of galaxies plays a fundamental role in how they appear today. However, many key open questions relating to chemical evolution still remain, and still impact our understanding of the origin of the elements. For example, how did the first stars live and explode? What is the nature of type Ia supernova progenitors? How do these affect elemental abundances in the Milky Way? And how do metallicity gradients evolve in other galaxies?

Future and ongoing observational facilities are opening a new window onto the chemically evolving Universe. For example, the VRO will discover over ten million supernovae and astronomical transients, ground-based spectrograph surveys such as APOGEE, GALAH, Gaia-ESO are mapping the chemical composition of millions of Milky Way stars, VLT/CUBES will make direct determinations of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen abundances from molecular bands, supernova progenitors will be revealed by gravitational waves detected by LISA, VLT/ERIS and MOONS will provide detailed metallicity gradients and calibrations, and JWST will hunt for the first stars formation sites and provide metallicities for distant galaxies. In parallel, advances in chemical evolution modelling, nuclear (astro)physics and stellar evolution are providing detailed predications for these observational data.

In this interdisciplinary session, we aim to bring together researchers from a wide range of related fields to tackle this quest together. The inter-related scientific themes that we hope to address are: (1) the rates of (super)nova, exotic merger events, and the production of the heaviest stable elements; (2) the impact of binaries on the rates and element production; (3) the [Fe/H]-[alpha/Fe] bimodality in the Milky Way disc; (4) metallicity gradients in galaxies and the roles of accretion & feedback.

Related sessions have been hosted in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 by the STFC-funded BRIDGCE network of universities of the United Kingdom (BRIdging the Disciplines of Galactic Chemical Evolution; website: www.bridgce.ac.uk), which investigates the origin of the elements and the evolution of the stars and galaxies. The session will bring together participants from a wider community of astronomical transients, the Milky Way, and external galaxies.

Schedule:

Session 1
09:05 Francesca Matteucci “Supernova yields and galactic chemical evolution”
09:30 Piyush Sharda “A new model for spatially-resolved metallicities in galaxies”
09:45 Maximilien Franco “Hydrogen fluoride in absorption at z=4.4: witnessing the ramp-up of chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium with ALMA”
10:00 Daid Kahl “Uncertainties in the 18F(p,alpha)15O reaction rate in classical novae”
10:15 Eugenia Naselli “A new experimental approach for in-plasma nuclear beta-decay investigations of astrophysical interest”

Session 2
13:00 Matthew Doherty “Do CO isotopologues point to IMF variation in starburst galaxies?”
13:15 Erin Higgins “Evolution of Wolf-Rayet stars as black hole progenitors : three wind recipes and their consequences on the critical black hole mass limit and observations of PPISNe”
13:30 Jianhui Lian “Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and external galaxies: two sides of the same coin”
13:55 Valeria Grisoni “Chemical evolution models of the Galaxy”
14:10 Michael Greener "The chemical evolution history of spiral galaxies"

Session 3
16:00 Andreea Font “Investigating the properties of Milky Way-like stellar haloes and of their satellite galaxies with cosmological simulations”
16:15 Flash poster presentations
16:30 Fergus Cullen “The stellar and gas-phase metallicities of star-forming galaxies at z=3.5”
16:45 Bethan Easeman “Investigating the origin of observed central dips in metallicity gradients”
17:00 Alex Cameron “Mapping direct-method metallicity throughout the baryon cycle in Mrk 1486”
17:15 Oli Dors “Metal abundance determinations in Seyfert nuclei based on direct method”