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Register a new userThe role of binaries in the enrichment of the early Galactic halo. III. Carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars -- CEMP-s stars
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Detailed spectroscopic studies of metal-poor halo stars have highlighted the important role of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars in understanding the early production and ejection of carbon in the Galaxy and in identifying the progenitors of the CEMP stars among the first stars formed after the Big Bang. Recent work has also classified the CEMP stars by absolute carbon abundance, A(C), into high- and low-C bands, mostly populated by binary and single stars, respectively. Our aim is to determine the frequency and orbital parameters of binary systems among the CEMP-s stars, which exhibit strong enhancements of neutron-capture elements associated with the s-process. This allows us to test whether local mass transfer from a binary companion is necessary and sufficient to explain their dramatic carbon excesses. Eighteen of the 22 stars exhibit clear orbital motion, yielding a binary frequency of 82+-10%, while four stars appear to be single (18+-10%). We thus confirm that the binary frequency of CEMP-s stars is much higher than for normal metal-poor giants, but not 100% as previously claimed. Secure orbits are determined for 11 of the binaries and provisional orbits for six long-period systems (P > 3,000 days), and orbital circularisation time scales are discussed. The conventional scenario of local mass transfer from a former AGB binary companion does appear to account for the chemical composition of most CEMP-s stars. However, the excess of C and s-process elements in some single CEMP-s stars was apparently transferred to their natal clouds by an external (distant) source. This finding has important implications for our understanding of carbon enrichment in the early Galactic halo and some high-redshift DLA systems, and of the mass loss from extremely metal-poor AGB stars. Abridged.
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The detailed chemical composition of most metal-poor halo stars has been found to be highly uniform, but a minority of stars exhibit dramatic enhancements in their abundances of heavy neutron-capture elements and/or of carbon. The key question for Galactic chemical evolution models is whether these peculiarities reflect the composition of the natal clouds, or if they are due to later mass transfer of processed material from a binary companion. If the former case applies, the observed excess of certain elements was implanted within selected clouds in the early ISM from a production site at interstellar distances. Our aim is to determine the frequency and orbital properties of binaries among these chemically peculiar stars. This information provides the basis for deciding whether mass transfer from a binary companion is necessary and sufficient to explain their unusual compositions. This paper discusses our study of a sample of 17 moderately (r-I) and highly (r-II) r-process-element enhanced VMP and EMP stars. High-resolution, low signal-to-noise spectra of the stars were obtained at roughly monthly intervals over 8 years with the FIES spectrograph at the Nordic Optical Telescope. From these spectra, radial velocities with an accuracy of ~100 m/s were determined by cross-correlation against an optimized template. 14 of the programme stars exhibit no significant RV variation over this period, while 3 are binaries with orbits of typical eccentricity for their periods, resulting in a normal binary frequency of ~18+-6% for the sample. Our results confirm our preliminary conclusion from 2011, based on partial data, that the chemical peculiarity of the r-I and r-II stars is not caused by any putative binary companions. Instead, it was imprinted on the natal molecular clouds of these stars by an external, distant source. Models of the ISM in early galaxies should account for such mechanisms.
We explore the kinematics and orbital properties of a sample of 323 very metal-poor stars in the halo system of the Milky Way, selected from the high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up studies of Aoki et al. and Yong et al. The combined sample contains a significant fraction of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars (22% or 29%, depending on whether a strict or relaxed criterion is applied for this definition). Barium abundances (or upper limits) are available for the great majority of the CEMP stars, allowing for their separation into the CEMP-$s$ and CEMP-no sub-classes. A new method to assign membership to the inner- and outer-halo populations of the Milky Way is developed, making use of the integrals of motion, and applied to determine the relative fractions of CEMP stars in these two sub-classes for each halo component. Although limited by small-number statistics, the data suggest that the inner halo of the Milky Way exhibits a somewhat higher relative number of CEMP-$s$ stars than CEMP-no stars (57% vs. 43%), while the outer halo possesses a clearly higher fraction of CEMP-no stars than CEMP-$s$ stars (70% vs. 30%). Although larger samples of CEMP stars with known Ba abundances are required, this result suggests that the dominant progenitors of CEMP stars in the two halo components were different; massive stars for the outer halo, and intermediate-mass stars in the case of the inner halo.
A significant fraction of all metal-poor stars are carbon-rich. Most of these carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars also show enhancement in elements produced mainly by the s-process (CEMP-s stars) and evidence suggests that the origin of these non-standard abundances can be traced to mass transfer from a binary asymptotic giant branch (AGB) companion. Thus, observations of CEMP-s stars are commonly used to infer the nucleosynthesis output of low-metallicity AGB stars. A crucial step in this exercise is understanding what happens to the accreted material after mass transfer ceases. Here we present models of the post-mass-transfer evolution of CEMP-s stars considering the physics of thermohaline mixing and atomic diffusion, including radiative levitation. We find that stars with typical CEMP-s star masses (M ~ 0.85 Msun) have very shallow convective envelopes (Menv < 1e-7 Msun). Hence, the surface abundance variations arising from the competition between gravitational settling and radiative levitation should be orders of magnitude larger than observed (e.g. [C/Fe]<-1 or [C/Fe]>+4). We are therefore unable to reproduce the spread in the observed abundances with these models and conclude that some other physical process must largely suppress atomic diffusion in the outer layers of CEMP-s stars. We demonstrate that this could be achieved by some additional (turbulent) mixing process operating at the base of the convective envelope, as found by other authors. Alternatively, mass-loss rates around 1e-13 Msun/yr could also negate most of the abundance variations by eroding the surface layers and forcing the base of the convective envelope to move inwards in mass. Since atomic diffusion cannot have a substantial effect on the surface abundances of CEMP-s stars, the dilution of the accreted material, while variable in degree from one star to the next, is most likely the same for all elements.
Carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars with s-process enrichment (CEMP-s) are believed to be the products of mass transfer from an AGB companion, which has long since become a white dwarf. The surface abundances of CEMP-s stars are thus commonly assumed to reflect the nucleosynthesis output of the first AGB stars. We have previously shown that, for this to be the case, some physical mechanism must counter atomic diffusion in these nearly fully radiative stars, which otherwise leads to surface abundance anomalies clearly inconsistent with observations. Here we take into account angular momentum accretion by these stars. We compute in detail the evolution of typical CEMP-s stars from the ZAMS, through the mass accretion, and up the RGB for a wide range of specific angular momentum of the accreted material, corresponding to rotation velocities between about 0.3 and 300 km/s. We find that only for specific angular momentum above 1e+17 cm2/s (rotation velocities above 20 km/s) angular momentum accretion directly causes chemical dilution of the accreted material. This could nevertheless be relevant to CEMP-s stars, which are observed to rotate more slowly, if they undergo continuous angular momentum loss akin to solar-like stars. In models with rotation velocities characteristic of CEMP-s stars, rotational mixing primarily serves to inhibit atomic diffusion, such that the maximal surface abundance variations (with respect to the composition of the accreted material) prior to first dredge-up remain within about 0.4 dex without thermohaline mixing or about 0.5-1.5 dex with thermohaline mixing. Even in models with the lowest rotation velocities (under a km/s), rotational mixing is able to severely inhibit atomic diffusion, compared to non-rotating models. We thus conclude that it offers a natural solution to the problem posed by atomic diffusion and cannot be neglected in models of CEMP-s stars.
A substantial fraction of the lowest metallicity stars show very high enhancements in carbon. It is debated whether these enhancements reflect the stars birth composition, or if their atmospheres were subsequently polluted, most likely by accretion from an AGB binary companion. Here we investigate and compare the binary properties of three carbon-enhanced sub-classes: The metal-poor CEMP-s stars that are additionally enhanced in barium; the higher metallicity (sg)CH- and Ba II stars also enhanced in barium; and the metal-poor CEMP-no stars, not enhanced in barium. Through comparison with simulations, we demonstrate that all barium-enhanced populations are best represented by a ~100% binary fraction with a shorter period distribution of at maximum ~20,000 days. This result greatly strengthens the hypothesis that a similar binary mass transfer origin is responsible for their chemical patterns. For the CEMP-no group we present new radial velocity data from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope for 15 stars to supplement the scarce literature data. Two of these stars show indisputable signatures of binarity. The complete CEMP-no dataset is clearly inconsistent with the binary properties of the CEMP-s class, thereby strongly indicating a different physical origin of their carbon enhancements. The CEMP-no binary fraction is still poorly constrained, but the population resembles more the binary properties in the Solar Neighbourhood.
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