No Arabic abstract
Two alternative scenarios concerning the origin and evolution of extremely metal-poor halo stars are investigated. The first one assumes that the stars have been completely metal-free initially and produced observed carbon and nitrogen overabundances during the peculiar core helium flash typical for low-mass Population-III stars. The second scenario assumes that the initial composition resulted from a mixture of primordial material with ejecta from a single primordial supernovae. Both scenarios are shown to have problems in reproducing C, N, and O abundances simultaneously, and both disagree with observed 12C/13C-ratios,though in different directions. We concentrate on the most iron-poor, carbon-rich object of this class, HE0107-5240, and conclude that the second scenario presently offers the more promising approach to understand these objects, in particular because evolutionary tracks match observations very well.
We investigate hydrodynamical and nucleosynthetic properties of the jet-induced explosion of a population III $40M_odot$ star and compare the abundance patterns of the yields with those of the metal-poor stars. We conclude that (1) the ejection of Fe-peak products and the fallback of unprocessed materials can account for the abundance patterns of the extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars and that (2) the jet-induced explosion with different energy deposition rates can explain the diversity of the abundance patterns of the metal-poor stars. Furthermore, the abundance distribution after the explosion and the angular dependence of the yield are shown for the models with high and low energy deposition rates $dot{E}_{rm dep}=120times10^{51} {rm ergs s^{-1}}$ and $1.5times10^{51} {rm ergs s^{-1}}$. We also find that the peculiar abundance pattern of a Si-deficient metal-poor star HE 1424--0241 can be reproduced by the angle-delimited yield for $theta=30^circ-35^circ$ of the model with $dot{E}_{rm dep}=120times10^{51} {rm ergs s^{-1}}$.
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.
Our current understanding of the chemical evolution of the Universe is that a first generation of stars was formed out of primordial material, completely devoid of metals (Pop III stars). This first population of stars comprised massive stars that exploded as supernovae disseminating the metals they synthesised in the interstellar medium. These massive stars are long dead and cannot be observed in the local Universe. Among very metal poor stars (metallicity below -2.0) we expect to find the direct descendants of these pristine metal factories. The chemical composition of these stars provides us indirect information on the nature of the Pop III stars, their masses, luminosities and mode of explosion. The constraints are stronger if the chemical inventory is more complete, more chemical elements and isotopic ratios are measured for each star. Unfortunately the lower the metallicity of the star, the weaker the lines. Access to the space UV spectral range gives us crucial supplementary information. To start with, it allows access to some very strong Fe lines that may allow to measure the abundance of this element in stars for which this was not possible from the ground-accessible UV spectra. The number of such stars is steadily increasing. Next the UV range allows us to measure elements that cannot be measured from ground-based spectra like P, Ge, As, Se, Cd, Te, Lu, Os, Ir, Pt, Au. In addition it is fundamental for measuring other elements that can be accessed from earth, but with great difficulty, like C, S, Cu, Zn, Pb. The Hubble space telescope, with its limited collecting power made this possible only for very few stars. Old metal poor stars are cool, of spectral types F,G,K, and their UV flux is low. The availability of a UV high resolution spectrograph fed by a large area space telescope will open an unprecedented window on the early evolution of our Galaxy.
We present and discuss the results of a search for extremely metal-poor stars based on photometry from data release DR1.1 of the SkyMapper imaging survey of the southern sky. In particular, we outline our photometric selection procedures and describe the low-resolution ($R$ $approx$ 3000) spectroscopic follow-up observations that are used to provide estimates of effective temperature, surface gravity and metallicity ([Fe/H]) for the candidates. The selection process is very efficient: of the 2618 candidates with low-resolution spectra that have photometric metallicity estimates less than or equal to -2.0, 41% have [Fe/H] $leq$ -2.75 and only $sim$7% have [Fe/H] $>$ -2.0 dex. The most metal-poor candidate in the sample has [Fe/H] $<$ -4.75 and is notably carbon-rich. Except at the lowest metallicities ([Fe/H] $<$ -4), the stars observed spectroscopically are dominated by a `carbon-normal population with [C/Fe]$_{1D,LTE}$ $leq$ +1 dex. Consideration of the A(C)$_{1D, LTE}$ versus [Fe/H]$_{1D, LTE}$ diagram suggests that the current selection process is strongly biased against stars with A(C)$_{1D, LTE}$ $>$ 7.3 (predominantly CEMP-$s$) while any bias against stars with A(C)$_{1D, LTE}$ $<$ 7.3 and [C/Fe]$_{LTE}$ $>$ +1 (predominantly CEMP-no) is not readily quantifiable given the uncertainty in the SkyMapper $v$-band DR1.1 photometry. We find that the metallicity distribution function of the observed sample has a power-law slope of $Delta$(Log N)/$Delta$[Fe/H] = 1.5 $pm$ 0.1 dex per dex for -4.0 $leq$ [Fe/H] $leq$ -2.75, but appears to drop abruptly at [Fe/H] $approx$ -4.2, in line with previous studies.
The chemical composition of extremely metal-poor stars (EMP stars; [Fe/H]<~ -3) is a unique tracer of early nucleosynthesis in the Galaxy. As such stars are rare, we wish to find classes of luminous stars which can be studied at high resolution. We aim to determine the detailed chemical composition of the two EMP stars CS30317-056 and CS22881-039, originally thought to be red horizontal-branch (RHB) stars, and compare it to earlier results for EMP stars as well as to nucleosynthesis yields from various supernova (SN) models. In the analysis, we discovered that our targets are in fact the two most metal-poor RR Lyrae stars known. Our detailed abundance analysis, taking into account the variability of the stars, is based on VLT/UVES spectra (R~ 43000) and 1D LTE OSMARCS model atmospheres and synthetic spectra. For comparison with SN models we also estimate NLTE corrections for a number of elements. We derive LTE abundances for the 16 elements O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Ca, Sc, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Sr and Ba, in good agreement with earlier values for EMP dwarf, giant and RHB stars. Li and C are not detected in either star. NLTE abundance corrections are newly calculated for O and Mg and taken from the literature for other elements. The resulting abundance pattern is best matched by model yields for supernova explosions with high energy and/or significant asphericity effects. Our results indicate that, except for Li and C, the surface composition of EMP RR Lyr stars is not significantly affected by mass loss, mixing or diffusion processes; hence, EMP RR Lyr stars should also be useful tracers of the chemical evolution of the early Galactic halo. The observed abundance ratios indicate that these stars were born from an ISM polluted by energetic, massive (25 - 40M*) and/or aspherical supernovae, but the NLTE corrections for Sc and certain other elements do play a role in the choice of model.