Nucleosynthesis inside accretion disks around intermediate—mass black holes Original Research Article

Nucleosynthesis is investigated inside an accredition disk around a black hole of 50 – 103M⊙ located in a circumnuclear region of starburst galaxies. Nuclear reactions proceed through the hot CNO cycle to produce large amounts of 14O and 15O, which decay to 14N and 15N. The calculated N/O − O/H relation is found to be consistent with that observed in the most metal-poor galaxies. The accretion disk may be one of the promising sites of nitrogen production.