Improved lanthanide constraints for the kilonova AT 2017gfo

Abstract

Spectroscopic observations of the kilonova AT 2017gfo provide a unique opportunity to identify signatures from individual heavy elements freshly synthesised via the r-process, the nucleosynthetic channel responsible for producing $\sim$half of all trans-iron-group elements. Limitations in the available atomic data have historically hampered comprehensive line identification studies; however, renewed interest has led to the generation of improved (more complete and accurately calibrated) line lists for r-process species. Here we demonstrate the utility of such data, by exploiting newly generated line lists for the lanthanides to model the photospheric-phase 3.4d X-shooter spectrum of AT 2017gfo with the radiative transfer tool TARDIS. We find the data can only be reproduced by invoking a substantially diminished lanthanide mass fraction ($X_{\textsc{ln}}$) than that proposed by previous studies. Specifically, our model necessitates $X_{\textsc{ln}} \approx 2.5 \times 10^{-3}$ in the line-forming region, a value $20 \times$ lower than previously claimed. This substantial reduction in $X_{\textsc{ln}}$ is driven by our inclusion of much more complete lanthanide line information that enables better estimation of their total contribution to the observations. We encourage future modelling works to exploit all atomic data advances, and also encourage continued efforts to generate the necessary data for the remaining r-process species of interest.