Nucleosynthesis in Super-AGB Stars

Super-AGB stars reside in the mass range ∼ 6.5–10 M☉ and are characterised by off-center carbon ignition prior to a thermally pulsing super-AGB phase. These stars can undergo from many tens to even thousands of thermal pulses and experience extreme nucleosynthetic conditions, with temperatures both at the base of the convective envelope and within the helium-burning intershell regions far higher than in their lower-mass counterparts. This can result in interesting nucleosynthesis from extreme hot bottom burning and also different heavy-element distributions caused by the high neutron density generated within the thermal pulse, with this material later mixed to the surface during third dredge-up events. We discuss recent nucleosynthetic yield results for super-AGB stars over the range of metallicity Z = 0.02 × 10–5 ([Fe/H] ∼ 0 to –3.3), and present a small suite of heavy element super-AGB star yield predictions. We also apply our nucleosynthetic results to examine the possible role of super-AGB stars as polluters of the anomalous stars within globular clusters.