arXiv subjects

Shinya Wanajo

Publications and source records attributed to Shinya Wanajo.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Lanthanide Features in Near-infrared Spectra of Kilonovae

The observations of GW170817/AT2017gfo have provided us with evidence that binary neutron star mergers are sites of $r$-process nucleosynthesis. However, the observed signatures in the spectra of GW170817/AT2017gfo have not been fully decoded especially in the near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. In this paper, we investigate the kilonova spectra over the entire wavelength range with the aim of elemental identification. We systematically calculate the strength of bound-bound transitions by constructing a hybrid line list that is accurate for important strong transitions and complete for weak transitions. We find that the elements on the left side of the periodic table, such as Ca, Sr, Y, Zr, Ba, La, and Ce, tend to produce prominent absorption lines in the spectra. This is because such elements have a small number of valence electrons and low-lying energy levels, resulting in strong transitions. By performing self-consistent radiative transfer simulations for the entire ejecta, we find that La III and Ce III appear in the NIR spectra, which can explain the absorption features at $λ\sim 12000$-14000 A in the spectra of GW170817/AT2017gfo. The mass fractions of La and Ce are estimated to be $>2\times 10^{-6}$ and $\sim$ (1-100)$\times 10^{-5}$, respectively. An actinide element Th can also be a source of absorption as the atomic structure is analogous to that of Ce. However, we show that Th III features are less prominent in the spectra because of the denser energy levels of actinides compared to those of lanthanides.

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arXiv2021

Fallback Accretion Halted by R-process Heating in Neutron Star Mergers and Gamma-Ray Bursts

The gravitational wave event GW170817 with a macronova/kilonova shows that a merger of two neutron stars ejects matter with radioactivity including $r$-process nucleosynthesis. A part of the ejecta inevitably falls back to the central object, possibly powering long-lasting activities of a short gamma-ray burst (sGRB), such as extended and plateau emissions. We investigate the fallback accretion with the $r$-process heating by performing one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations and developing a semi-analytical model. We show that the usual fallback rate $dM/dt \propto t^{-5/3}$ is halted by the heating because pressure gradients accelerate ejecta beyond an escape velocity. The suppression is steeper than Chevalier's power-law model through Bondi accretion within a turn-around radius. The characteristic halting timescale is $\sim 10^5$--$10^9$ sec for the GW170817-like $r$-process heating, which is long enough to continue the long-lasting emission of sGRBs. The halting timescale is sensitive to the uncertainty of the $r$-process. Future observation of fallback halting could constrain the $r$-process heating on the year scale.

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arXiv2021

Neutron star mergers as the astrophysical site of the r-process in the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies

Recent progress of nucleosynthesis work as well as the discovery of a kilonova associated with the gravitational-wave source GW170817 indicates that neutron star mergers (NSM) can be a site of the r-process. Several studies of galactic chemical evolution, however, have pointed out inconsistencies between this idea and the observed stellar abundance signatures in the Milky Way: (a) the presence of Eu at low (halo) metallicity and (b) the descending trend of Eu/Fe at high (disc) metallicity. In this study, we explore the galactic chemical evolution of the Milky Way's halo, disc and satellite dwarf galaxies. Particular attention is payed to the forms of delay-time distributions for both type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) and NSMs. The Galactic halo is modeled as an ensemble of independently evolving building-block galaxies with different masses. The single building blocks as well as the disc and satellite dwarfs are treated as well-mixed one-zone systems. Our results indicate that the aforementioned inconsistencies can be resolved and thus NSMs can be the unique r-process site in the Milky Way, provided that the delay-time distributions satisfy the following conditions: (i) a long delay (~1 Gyr) for the appearance of the first SN Ia (or a slow early increase of its number) and (ii) an additional early component providing >~ 50% of all NSMs with a delay of ~0.1 Gyr. In our model, r-process-enhanced and r-process-deficient stars in the halo appear to have originated from ultra-faint dwarf-sized and massive building blocks, respectively. Our results also imply that the natal kicks of binary neutron stars have a little impact on the evolution of Eu in the disc.

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arXiv2021

Signatures of r-process elements in kilonova spectra

Binary neutron star (NS) mergers have been expected to synthesize r-process elements and emit radioactively powered radiation, called kilonova. Although r-process nucleosynthesis was confirmed by the observations of GW170817/AT2017gfo, no trace of individual elements has been identified except for strontium. In this paper, we perform systematic calculations of line strength for bound-bound transitions and radiative transfer simulations in NS merger ejecta toward element identification in kilonova spectra. We find that Sr II triplet lines appear in the spectrum of a lanthanide-poor model, which is consistent with the absorption feature observed in GW170817/AT2017gfo. The synthetic spectrum also shows the strong Ca II triplet lines. This is natural because Ca and Sr are co-produced in the material with relatively high electron fraction and their ions have similar atomic structures with only one s-electron in the outermost shell. The line strength, however, highly depends on the abundance distribution and temperature in the ejecta. For our lanthanide-rich model, the spectra show the features of doubly ionized heavy elements, such as Ce, Tb and Th. Our results suggest that the line forming region of GW170817/AT2017gfo was lanthanide-poor. We show that the Sr II and Ca II lines can be used as a probe of physical conditions in NS merger ejecta. Absence of the Ca II line features in GW170817/AT2017gfo implies that the Ca/Sr ratio is < 0.002 in mass fraction, which is consistent with nucleosynthesis for electron fraction >= 0.40 and entropy per nucleon (in units of Boltzmann constant) >= 25.

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arXiv2020

Viscous evolution of a massive disk surrounding stellar-mass black holes in full general relativity

Long-term viscous neutrino-radiation hydrodynamics simulations in full general relativity are performed for a massive disk surrounding spinning stellar-mass black holes with mass $M_{\rm BH}=4$, $6$, and $10M_\odot$ and initial dimensionless spin $χ\approx 0.8$. The initial disk is chosen to have mass $M_{\rm disk}\approx 0.1$ or $3M_\odot$ as plausible models of the remnants for the merger of black hole-neutron star binaries or the stellar core collapse from a rapidly rotating progenitor, respectively. For $M_{\rm disk} \approx 0.1M_\odot$ with the outer disk edge initially located at $r_{\rm out} \sim 200$ km, we find that $15$%-$20$% of $M_{\rm disk}$ is ejected and the average electron fraction of the ejecta is $\langle Y_e \rangle = 0.30$-$0.35$ as found in the previous study. For $M_{\rm disk} \approx 3M_\odot$, we find that $\approx 10$%-$20$% of $M_{\rm disk}$ is ejected for $r_{\rm out}\approx 200$-$1000$ km. In addition, $\langle Y_e \rangle$ of the ejecta can be enhanced to be $\gtrsim 0.4$ because the electron fraction is increased significantly during the long-term viscous expansion of the disk with high neutrino luminosity until the mass ejection sets in. Our results suggest that not heavy $r$-process elements but light trans-iron elements would be synthesized in the matter ejected from a massive torus surrounding stellar-mass black holes. We also find that the outcomes of the viscous evolution for the high-mass disk case is composed of a rapidly spinning black hole surrounded by a torus with a narrow funnel, which appears to be suitable for generating gamma-ray bursts.

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arXiv2020

Post-merger Mass Ejection of Low-mass Binary Neutron Stars

We study the post-merger mass ejection of low-mass binary neutron stars (NSs) with the system mass of $2.5\, M_\odot$, and subsequent nucleosynthesis by performing general-relativistic, neutrino-radiation viscous-hydrodynamics simulations in axial symmetry. We find that the merger remnants are long-lived massive NSs surviving more than several seconds, irrespective of the nuclear equations of state (EOSs) adopted. The ejecta masses of our fiducial models are $\sim 0.06$-$0.1\, M_\odot$ (depending on the EOS), being $\sim 30\%$ of the initial disk masses ($\sim 0.15$-$0.3\, M_\odot$). Post-processing nucleosynthesis calculations indicate that the ejecta is composed mainly of light $r$-process nuclei with small amounts of lanthanides (mass fraction $\sim 0.002$-$0.004$) and heavier species due to the modest average electron fraction ($\sim 0.32$-$0.34$) for a reasonable value of the viscous coefficient. Such abundance distributions are incompatible with the solar $r$-process-like abundance patterns found in all measured $r$-process-enhanced metal-poor stars. Therefore, low-mass binary NS mergers should be rare. If such low-mass NS mergers occur, their electromagnetic counterparts, kilonovae, will be characterized by an early bright blue emission because of the large ejecta mass as well as the small lanthanide fraction. We also show, however, that if the effective turbulent viscosity is very high, or there is an efficient mass ejection working in the early post-merger phase, the electron fraction of the ejecta could be low enough that the solar $r$-process-like abundance pattern is reproduced and the lanthanide fraction becomes so high that the kilonova would be characterized by early bright blue and late bright red emissions.

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arXiv2020

Mass ejection from disks surrounding a low-mass black hole: Viscous neutrino-radiation hydrodynamics simulation in full general relativity

New viscous neutrino-radiation hydrodynamics simulations are performed for accretion disks surrounding a spinning black hole with low mass $3M_\odot$ and dimensionless spin 0.8 or 0.6 in full general relativity, aiming at modeling the evolution of a merger remnant of massive binary neutron stars or low-mass black hole-neutron star binaries. We reconfirm the following results found by previous studies of other groups: 15-30% of the disk mass is ejected from the system with the average velocity of $\sim $5-10% of the speed of light for the plausible profile of the disk as merger remnants. In addition, we find that for the not extremely high viscous coefficient case, the neutron richness of the ejecta does not become very high, because weak interaction processes enhance the electron fraction during the viscous expansion of the disk before the onset of the mass ejection, resulting in the suppression of the lanthanide synthesis. For high-mass disks, the viscous expansion timescale is increased by a longer-term neutrino emission, and hence, the electron fraction of the ejecta becomes even higher. We also confirm that the mass distribution of the electron fraction depends strongly on the magnitude of the given viscous coefficient. This demonstrates that a first-principle magnetohydrodynamics simulation is necessary for black hole-disk systems with sufficient grid resolution and with sufficiently long timescale (longer than seconds) to clarify the nucleosynthesis and electromagnetic signals from them.

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arXiv2019

r-Process and Kilonovae

The kilonova associated with the neutron star merger GW170817 provides us with several hints to elucidate the nature of the r-process in the universe. In this article, we inspect the radioactive isotopes that powered the kilonova emission, provided that the merger ejecta consisted of material with a solar r-like abundance pattern. It is suggested that the early (1-10 days after merger) kilonova emission is mainly due to the beta-decay chain 66Ni -> 66Cu -> 66Zn, which can be the source of the steepening of the light curve at about 7 days. The late time (> 10 days) heaing is attributed to the alpha-decay and fission (254Cf) of trans-Pb species (in addition to beta-decay), which can be the signature of r-processing beyond the heaviest stable elements. This article summarizes a recent work by the author (Wanajo 2018) with the additional calculations of kilonova light curves by using a numerical code in Hotokezaka and Nakar (2019).

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arXiv2019

Enrichment of Strontium in Dwarf Galaxies

Light trans-iron elements such as Sr serve as the key to understanding the astrophysical sites of heavy elements. Spectroscopic studies of metal-poor stars have revealed large star-to-star scatters in the ratios of [Sr/Ba], which indicates that there are multiple sites for the production of Sr. Here we present the enrichment history of Sr by a series of the $N$-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of a dwarf galaxy with a stellar mass of 3 $\times$ 10$^{6}$ $M_{\odot}$. We show that binary neutron star mergers (NSMs) and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars contribute to the enrichment of Sr in the metallicity ranges [Fe/H] $\gtrsim$ $-$3 and [Fe/H] $\gtrsim$ $-$1, respectively. It appears insufficient, however, to explain the overall observational trends of Sr by considering only these sites. We find that the models including electron-capture supernovae (ECSNe) and rotating massive stars (RMSs), in addition to NSMs and AGBs, reasonably reproduce the enrichment histories of Sr in dwarf galaxies. The contributions of both ECSNe and NSMs make scatters of $\approx$ 0.2 dex in [Sr/Fe], [Sr/Ba], and [Sr/Zn] as can be seen for observed stars in the metallicity range [Fe/H] $<$ $-2$. We also find that the mass range of ECSN progenitors should be substantially smaller than $1\, M_\odot$ (e.g., 0.1-$0.2\, M_\odot$) to avoid over-prediction of [Sr/Ba] and [Sr/Zn] ratios. Our results demonstrate that NSMs, AGBs, ECSNe, and RMSs all play roles in the enrichment histories of Local Group dwarf galaxies, although more observational data are required to disentangle the relative contributions of these sources.

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arXiv2018

Stochastic Chemical Evolution of Galactic Subhalos and the Origin of r-Process Elements

Mergers of compact binaries (of a neutron star and another neutron star or a black hole, NSMs) are suggested to be the promising astrophysical site of the r-process. While the average coalescence timescale of NSMs appears to be > 100 Myr, most of previous chemical evolution models indicate that the observed early appearance and large dispersion of [r/Fe] in Galactic halo stars at [Fe/H] < -2.5 favors shorter coalescence times of 1-10 Myr. We argue that this is not the case for the models assuming the formation of the Galactic halo from clustering of subhalos with different star formation histories as suggested by Ishimaru et al. (2015). We present a stochastic chemical evolution model of the subhalos, in which the site of the r-process is assumed to be mainly NSMs with a coalescence timescale of 100 Myr. In view of the scarcity of NSMs, their occurrence in each subhalo is computed with a Monte Carlo method. Our results show that the less massive subhalos evolve at lower metallicities and generate highly r-process-enhanced stars. An assembly of these subhalos leaves behind the large star-to-star scatters of [r/Fe] in the Galactic halo as observed. However, the observed scatters of [Sr/Ba] at low metallicities indicate the presence of an additional site that partially contributes to the enrichment of light neutron-capture elements such as Sr. The high enhancements of [r/Fe] at low metallicities found in our low-mass subhalo models also qualitatively reproduce the abundance signatures of the stars in the recently discovered ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II. Therefore, our results suggest NSMs as the dominant sources of r-process elements in the Galactic halo.

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arXiv2018

Physical conditions for the r-process I. radioactive energy sources of kilonovae

Radioactive energies from unstable nuclei made in the ejecta of neutron star mergers play principal roles in powering kilonovae. In previous studies power-law-type heating rates (e.g., ~ t^-1.3) have frequently been used, which may be inadequate if the ejecta are dominated by nuclei other than the A ~ 130 region. We consider, therefore, two reference abundance distributions that match the r-process residuals to the solar abundances for A >= 69 (light trans-iron plus r-process elements) and A >= 90 (r-process elements). Nucleosynthetic abundances are obtained by using free-expansion models with three parameters: expansion velocity, entropy, and electron fraction. Radioactive energies are calculated as an ensemble of weighted free-expansion models that reproduce the reference abundance patterns. The results are compared with the bolometric luminosity (> a few days since merger) of the kilonova associated with GW170817. We find that the former case (fitted for A >= 69) with an ejecta mass 0.06 M_sun reproduces the light curve remarkably well including its steepening at > 7 days, in which the mass of r-process elements is ~ 0.01 M_sun. Two beta-decay chains are identified: 66Ni -> 66Cu -> 66Zn and 72Zn -> 72Ga -> 72Ge with similar halflives of parent isotopes (~ 2 days), which leads to an exponential-like evolution of heating rates during 1-15 days. The light curve at late times (> 40 days) is consistent with additional contributions from the spontaneous fission of 254Cf and a few Fm isotopes. If this is the case, the event GW170817 is best explained by the production of both light trans-iron and r-process elements that originate from dynamical ejecta and subsequent disk outflows from the neutron star merger.

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arXiv2018

Enrichment of Zinc in galactic chemodynamical evolution models

The heaviest iron-peak element, Zn has been used as an important tracer of cosmic chemical evolution. Spectroscopic observations of the metal-poor stars in Local Group galaxies show that an increasing trend of [Zn/Fe] ratios toward lower metallicity. However, enrichment of Zn in galaxies is not well understood due to the poor knowledge of astrophysical sites of Zn as well as metal mixing in galaxies. Here we show possible explanations for the observed trend by taking into account electron-capture supernovae (ECSNe) as one of the sources of Zn in our chemodynamical simulations of dwarf galaxies. We find that the ejecta from ECSNe contribute to stars with [Zn/Fe] $\gtrsim$ 0.5. We also find that scatters of [Zn/Fe] in higher metallicity originate from the ejecta of type Ia supernovae. On the other hand, it appears difficult to explain the observed trends if we do not consider ECSNe as a source of Zn. These results come from inhomogeneous spatial metallicity distribution due to the inefficiency of metal mixing. We find that the optimal value of scaling factor for metal diffusion coefficient is $\sim$ 0.01 in the shear-based metal mixing model in smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. These results suggest that ECSNe can be one of the contributors to the enrichment of Zn in galaxies.

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arXiv2017

Nucleosynthesis in the Innermost Ejecta of Neutrino-Drive Supernova Explosions in Two Dimensions

We examine the nucleosynthesis in the innermost, neutrino-processed ejecta (a few $10^{-3}\,M_\odot$) of self-consistent, two-dimensional explosion models of core-collapse supernovae for six progenitor stars with different initial masses. Three models have initial masses near the low-mass end of the supernova range, $8.8\,M_\odot$ (e8.8; electron-capture supernova), $9.6\,M_\odot$ (z9.6), and $8.1\,M_\odot$ (u8.1), with initial metallicities of 1, 0, and $10^{-4}$ times the solar metallicity, respectively. The other three are solar-metallicity models with initial masses of $11.2\,M_\odot$ (s11), $15\,M_\odot$ (s15), and $27\,M_\odot$ (s27). The low-mass models e8.8, z9.6, and u8.1 exhibit high production factors (nucleosynthetic abundances relative to the solar ones) of 100--200 for light trans-iron elements from Zn to Zr. This is associated with appreciable ejection of neutron-rich matter in these models. Remarkably, the nucleosynthetic outcomes for progenitors e8.8 and z9.6 are almost identical, including interesting productions of $^{48}$Ca and $^{60}$Fe, irrespective of their quite different (O-Ne-Mg and Fe) cores prior to collapse. In the more massive models s11, s15, and s27, several proton-rich isotopes of light trans-iron elements, including the $p$-isotope $^{92}$Mo (for s27) are made, up to production factors of $\sim$30. Both electron-capture and core-collapse supernovae near the low-mass end can therefore be dominant contributors to the Galactic inventory of light trans-iron elements from Zn to Zr and probably $^{48}$Ca and live $^{60}$Fe. The innermost ejecta of more massive supernovae may have only sub-dominant contributions to the chemical enrichment of the Galaxy except for $^{92}$Mo.

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arXiv2017

Properties of Kilonovae from Dynamical and Post-Merger Ejecta of Neutron Star Mergers

Ejected material from neutron star mergers give rise to electromagnetic emission powered by radioactive decays of r-process nuclei, which is so called kilonova or macronova. While properties of the emission are largely affected by opacities in the ejected material, available atomic data for r-process elements are still limited. We perform atomic structure calculations for r-process elements: Se (Z=34), Ru (Z=44), Te (Z=52), Ba (Z=56), Nd (Z=60), and Er (Z=68). We confirm that the opacities from bound-bound transitions of open f-shell, Lanthanide elements (Nd and Er) are higher than those of the other elements over a wide wavelength range. The opacities of open s-shell (Ba), p-shell (Se and Te), and d-shell (Ru) elements are lower than those of open f-shell elements and their transitions are concentrated in the ultraviolet wavelengths. We show that the optical brightness can be different by >2 mag depending on the element abundances in the ejecta such that post-merger, Lanthanide-free ejecta produce brighter and bluer optical emission. Such blue emission from post-merger ejecta can be observed from the polar directions if the mass of the preceding dynamical ejecta in these regions is small. For the ejecta mass of 0.01 Msun, observed magnitudes of the blue emission will reach 21.0 mag (100 Mpc) and 22.5 mag (200 Mpc) in g and r bands within a few days after the merger, which are detectable with 1m or 2m-class telescopes.

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arXiv2017

Diversity of Abundance Patterns of Light Neutron-capture Elements in Very-metal-poor Stars

We determine the abundances of neutron-capture elements from Sr to Eu for five very-metal-poor stars (-3<[Fe/H]<-2) in the Milky Way halo to reveal the origin of light neutron-capture elements. Previous spectroscopic studies have shown evidence of at least two components in the r-process; one referred to as the "main r-process" and the other as the "weak r-process," which is mainly responsible for producing heavy and light neutron-capture elements, respectively. Observational studies of metal-poor stars suggest that there is a universal pattern in the main r-process, similar to the abundance pattern of the r-process component of solar-system material. Still, it is uncertain whether the abundance pattern of the weak r-process shows universality or diversity, due to the sparseness of measured light neutron-capture elements. We have detected the key elements, Mo, Ru, and Pd, in five target stars to give an answer to this question. The abundance patterns of light neutron-capture elements from Sr to Pd suggest a diversity in the weak r-process. In particular, scatter in the abundance ratio between Ru and Pd is significant when the abundance patterns are normalized at Zr. Our results are compared with the elemental abundances predicted by nucleosynthesis models of supernovae with parameters such as electron fraction or proto-neutron-star mass, to investigate sources of such diversity in the abundance patterns of light neutron-capture elements. This paper presents that the variation in the abundances of observed stars can be explained with a small range of parameters, which can serve as constraints on future modeling of supernova models.

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arXiv2015

Radioactive decay products in neutron star merger ejecta: heating efficiency and $γ$-ray emission

The radioactive decay of the freshly synthesized $r$-process nuclei ejected in compact binary mergers power optical/infrared macronovae (kilonovae) that follow these events. The light curves depend critically on the energy partition among the different products of the radioactive decay and this plays an important role in estimates of the amount of ejected $r$-process elements from a given observed signal. We study the energy partition and $γ$-ray emission of the radioactive decay. We show that $20$-$50\%$ of the total radioactive energy is released in $γ$-rays on timescales from hours to a month. The number of emitted $γ$-rays per unit energy interval has roughly a flat spectrum between a few dozen keV and $1$ MeV so that most of this energy is carried by $\sim 1$ MeV $γ$-rays. However at the peak of macronova emission the optical depth of the $γ$-rays is $\sim 0.02$ and most of the $γ$-rays escape. The loss of these $γ$-rays reduces the heat deposition into the ejecta and hence reduces the expected macronova signals if those are lanthanides dominated. This implies that the ejected mass is larger by a factor of $2$-$3$ than what was previously estimated. Spontaneous fission heats up the ejecta and the heating rate can increase if a sufficient amount of transuranic nuclei are synthesized. Direct measurements of these escaping $γ$-rays may provide the ultimate proof for the macronova mechanisms and an identification of the $r$-process nucleosynthesis sites. However, the chances to detect these signals are slim with current X-ray and $γ$-ray missions. New detectors, more sensitive by at least a factor of ten, are needed for a realistic detection rate.

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arXiv2015

Impact of neutrino flavor oscillations on the neutrino-driven wind nucleosynthesis of an electron-capture supernova

Neutrino oscillations, especially to light sterile states, can affect the nucleosynthesis yields because of their possible feedback effect on the electron fraction (Ye). For the first time, we perform nucleosynthesis calculations for neutrino-driven wind trajectories from the neutrino-cooling phase of an 8.8 Msun electron-capture supernova, whose hydrodynamic evolution was computed in spherical symmetry with sophisticated neutrino transport and whose Ye evolution was post-processed by including neutrino oscillations both between active and active-sterile flavors. We also take into account the alpha-effect as well as weak magnetism and recoil corrections in the neutrino absorption and emission processes. We observe effects on the Ye evolution which depend in a subtle way on the relative radial positions of the sterile MSW resonances, of collective flavor transformations, and on the formation of alpha particles. For the adopted supernova progenitor, we find that neutrino oscillations, also to a sterile state with eV-mass, do not significantly affect the element formation and in particular cannot make the post-explosion wind outflow neutron rich enough to activate a strong r-process. Our conclusions become even more robust when, in order to mimic equation-of-state dependent corrections due to nucleon potential effects in the dense-medium neutrino opacities, six cases with reduced Ye in the wind are considered. In these cases, despite the conversion of active neutrinos to sterile neutrinos, Ye increases or is not significantly lowered compared to the values obtained without oscillations and active flavor transformations. This is a consequence of a complicated interplay between sterile-neutrino production, neutrino-neutrino interactions, and alpha-effect.

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arXiv2015

Neutron Star Mergers as the Origin of r-Process Elements in the Galactic Halo Based on the Sub-halo Clustering Scenario

Binary mergers (NSMs) of double neutron star (and black hole-neutron star) systems are suggested to be major sites of r-process elements in the Galaxy by recent hydrodynamical and nucleosynthesis studies. It has been pointed out, however, that the estimated long lifetimes of neutron star binaries are in conflict with the presence of r-process-enhanced halo stars at metallicities as low as [Fe/H] ~ -3. To resolve this problem, we examine the role of NSMs in the early Galactic chemical evolution on the assumption that the Galactic halo was formed from merging sub-halos. We present simple models for the chemical evolution of sub-halos with total final stellar masses between 10^4 M_solar and 2 x 10^8 M_solar. Typical lifetimes of compact binaries are assumed to be 100 Myr (for 95% of their population) and 1 Myr (for 5%), according to recent binary population synthesis studies. The resulting metallcities of sub-halos and their ensemble are consistent with the observed mass-metallicity relation of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group, and the metallicity distribution of the Galactic halo, respectively. We find that the r-process abundance ratios [r/Fe] start increasing at [Fe/H] <= -3 if the star formation efficiencies are smaller for less massive sub-halos. In addition, the sub-solar [r/Fe] values (observed as [Ba/Fe] ~ -1.5 for [Fe/H] < -3) are explained by the contribution from the short-lived (~1 Myr) binaries. Our results indicate that NSMs may have a substantial contribution to the r-process element abundances throughout the Galactic history.

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