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Register a new userOxygen in the early Galaxy: OH lines as tracers of oxygen abundance in extremely metal-poor giant stars
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Oxygen is a powerful tracer element of Galactic chemical evolution. Unfortunately, only a few oxygen lines are available in the ultraviolet-infrared stellar spectra for the reliable determination of its abundance. Moreover, oxygen abundances obtained using different spectral lines often disagree significantly. In this contribution we therefore investigate whether the inadequate treatment of convection in 1D hydrostatic model atmospheres used in the abundance determinations may be responsible for this disagreement. For this purpose, we used VLT CRIRES spectra of three EMP giants, as well as 3D hydrodynamical CO$^5$BOLD and 1D hydrostatic LHD model atmospheres, to investigate the role of convection in the formation of infrared (IR) OH lines. Our results show that the presence of convection leads to significantly stronger IR OH lines. As a result, the difference in the oxygen abundance determined from IR OH lines with 3D hydrodynamical and classical 1D hydrostatic model atmospheres may reach -0.2 ... -0.3 dex. In case of the three EMP giants studied here, we obtain a good agrement between the 3D LTE oxygen abundances determined by us using vibrational-rotational IR OH lines in the spectral range of 1514-1626 nm, and oxygen abundances determined from forbidden [O I] 630 nm line in previous studies.
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Context. Although oxygen is an important tracer of Galactic chemical evolution, measurements of its abundance in the atmospheres of the oldest Galactic stars are still scarce and rather imprecise. At the lowest end of the metallicity scale, oxygen can only be measured in giant stars and in most of cases such measurements rely on a single forbidden [O I] 630 nm line that is very weak and frequently blended with telluric lines. Although molecular OH lines located in the ultraviolet and infrared could also be used for the diagnostics, oxygen abundances obtained from the OH lines and the [O I] 630 nm line are usually discrepant to a level of ~0.3-0.4 dex. Aims. We study the influence of convection on the formation of the infrared (IR) OH lines and the forbidden [O I] 630 nm line in the atmospheres of extremely metal-poor (EMP) red giant stars. Methods. We used high-resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio spectra of four EMP red giant stars obtained with the VLT CRIRES spectrograph. For each EMP star, 4-14 IR OH vibrational-rotational lines located in the spectral range of 1514-1548 and 1595-1632 nm were used to determine oxygen abundances by employing standard 1D LTE abundance analysis methodology. We then corrected the 1D LTE abundances obtained from each individual OH line for the 3D hydrodynamical effects. Results. We find that the influence of convection on the formation of [O I] 630 nm line in the atmospheres of EMP giants studied here is minor, which leads to very small 3D-1D abundance corrections (< -0.01 dex). On the contrary, IR OH lines are strongly affected by convection and thus the abundance corrections for these lines are significant, 3D-1D ~ -0.2 ... -0.3 dex. These abundance corrections do indeed bring the 1D LTE oxygen abundances of EMP red giants obtained using IR OH lines into better agreement with those determined from the [O I] 630 nm line.
After the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the first heavy element enrichment in the Universe was made by a supernova (SN) explosion of a population (Pop) III star (Pop III SN). The abundance ratios of elements produced from Pop III SNe are recorded in abundance patterns of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars. The observations of the increasing number of EMP stars have made it possible to statistically constrain the explosion properties of Pop III SNe. We present Pop III SN models whose nucleosynthesis yields well-reproduce individually the abundance patterns of 48 such metal-poor stars as [Fe/H] $mathrel{rlap{lower 4pt hbox{$sim$}}raise 1pt hbox {$<$}}-3.5$. We then derive relations between the abundance ratios of EMP stars and certain explosion properties of Pop III SNe: the higher [(C+N)/Fe] and [(C+N)/Mg] ratios correspond to the smaller ejected Fe mass and the larger compact remnant mass, respectively. Using these relations, the distributions of the abundance ratios of EMP stars are converted to those of the explosion properties of Pop III SNe. Such distributions are compared with those of the explosion properties of present day SNe: The distribution of the ejected Fe mass of Pop III SNe has the same peak as that of the resent day SNe but shows an extended tail down to $sim10^{-2}-10^{-5}M_odot$, and the distribution of the mass of the compact remnant of Pop III SNe is as wide as that of the present day stellar-mass black holes. Our results demonstrate the importance of large samples of EMP stars obtained by ongoing and future EMP star surveys and subsequent high-dispersion spectroscopic observations in clarifying the nature of Pop III SNe in the early Universe.
The origin of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars plays a key role in characterising the formation and evolution of the first stars and the Galaxy since the extremely-poor (EMP) stars with [Fe/H] leq -2.5 share the common features of carbon enhancement in their surface chemical compositions. The origin of these stars is not yet established due to the controversy of the origin of CEMP stars without the enhancement of s-process element abundances, i.e., so called CEMP-no stars. In this paper, we elaborate the s-process nucleosynthesis in the EMP AGB stars and explore the origin of CEMP stars. We find that the efficiency of the s-process is controlled by O rather than Fe at [Fe/H] lesssim -2. We demonstrate that the relative abundances of Sr, Ba, Pb to C are explained in terms of the wind accretion from AGB stars in binary systems.
(Abridged) Extremely metal-poor stars contain the fossil records of the chemical composition of the early Galaxy. The NLTE profiles of the calcium lines were computed in a sample of 53 extremely metal-poor stars with a modified version of the program MULTI. With our new model atom we are able to reconcile the abundance of Ca deduced from the Ca I and Ca II lines in Procyon. -We find that [Ca/Fe] = 0.50 $pm$ 0.09 in the early Galaxy, a value slightly higher than the previous LTE estimations. -The scatter of the ratios [X/Ca] is generally smaller than the scatter of the ratio [X/Mg] where X is a light metal (O, Na, Mg, Al, S, and K) with the exception of Al. These scatters cannot be explained by error of measurements, except for oxygen. Surprisingly, the scatter of [X/Fe] is always equal to, or even smaller than, the scatter around the mean value of [X/Ca]. -We note that at low metallicity, the wavelength of the Ca I resonance line is shifted relative to the (weaker) subordinate lines, a signature of the effect of convection. -The Ca abundance deduced from the Ca I resonance line (422.7 nm) is found to be systematically smaller at very low metallicity, than the abundance deduced from the subordinate lines.
Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars are an integral piece in the puzzle that is the early Universe, and although anomolous subclasses of EMP stars such as carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars are well-studied, they make up less than half of all EMP stars with [Fe/H] $sim -3.0$. The amount of carbon depletion occurring on the red giant branch (carbon offset) is used to determine the evolutionary status of EMP stars, and this offset will differ between CEMP and normal EMP stars. The depletion mechanism employed in stellar models (from which carbon offfsets are derived) is very important, however the only widely available carbon offsets in the literature are derived from stellar models using a thermohaline mixing mechanism that cannot simultaneously match carbon and lithium abundances to observations for a single diffusion coeffcient. Our stellar evolution models utilise a modified thermohaline mixing model that can match carbon and lithium in the metal-poor globular cluster NGC 6397. We compare our models to the bulk of the EMP star sample at [Fe/H] $= -3$ and show that our modified models follow the trend of the observations and deplete less carbon compared to the standard thermohaline mixing theory. We conclude that stellar models that employ the standard thermohaline mixing formalism overestimate carbon offsets and hence CEMP star frequencies, particularly at metallicities where carbon-normal stars dominate the EMP star population.
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