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Compact binary mergers involving at least one neutron star are promisingsites for the synthesis of $\textit{r}$-process elements found in stars andplanets. However, mergers can take place at significant offsets from their hostgalaxies, with many occurring several kpc from star-forming regions. It is thusimportant to understand the physical mechanisms involved in transportingenriched material from merger sites in the galactic halo to the star-formingdisk. We investigate these processes, starting from an explosive injectionevent and its interaction with the halo medium. We show that the total outflowmass in compact binary mergers is too low for the material to travel to thedisk in a ballistic fashion. Instead, the enriched ejecta is swept into ashell, which decelerates over $\lesssim 10$ pc scales and becomes corrugated bythe Rayleigh-Taylor instability. The corrugated shell is denser than theambient medium, and breaks into clouds which sink toward the disk. Thesesinking clouds lose thermal energy through radiative cooling, and are alsoablated by shearing instabilities. We present a dynamical heuristic that modelsthese effects to predict the delay times for delivery to the disk. However, wefind that turbulent mass ablation is extremely efficient, and leads to thetotal fragmentation of sinking $\textit{r}$-process clouds over $10-100$ pcscales. We thus predict that enriched material from halo injection eventsquickly assimilates into the gas medium of the halo, and that enriched massflow to the disk could only be accomplished through turbulent diffusion orlarge-scale inflowing mass currents.

R-process Rain from Binary Neutron Star Mergers in the Galactic Halo