The s-Process Nucleosynthesis in Extremely Metal-Poor Stars as the Generating Mechanism of Carbon Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars

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.Comment: The Proceedings of the Nuclei in the Cosmos XIV, in pres

The Stellar Abundances for Galactic Archeology (SAGA) Database - Compilation of the Characteristics of Known Extremely Metal-Poor Stars

We describe the construction of a database of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars in the Galactic halo whose elemental abundances have been determined. Our database contains detailed elemental abundances, reported equivalent widths, atmospheric parameters, photometry, and binarity status, compiled from papers in the recent literature that report studies of EMP halo stars with [Fe/H] < -2.5. The compilation procedures for this database have been designed to assemble the data effectively from electronic tables available from online journals. We have also developed a data retrieval system that enables data searches by various criteria, and permits the user to explore relationships between the stored variables graphically. Currently, our sample includes 1212 unique stars (many of which are studied by more than one group) with more than 15000 individual reported elemental abundances, covering all of the relevant papers published by December 2007. We discuss the global characteristics of the present database, as revealed by the EMP stars observed to date. For stars with [Fe/H] < -2.5, the number of giants with reported abundances is larger than that of dwarfs by a factor of two. The fraction of carbon-rich stars (among the sample for which the carbon abundance is reported) amount to ~30 % for [Fe/H] < -2.5. We find that known binaries exhibit different distributions of orbital period, according to whether they are giants or dwarfs, and also as a function of metallicity, although the total sample of such stars is still quite small.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, accepted by PASJ, final version. The SAGA database is available at http://saga.sci.hokudai.ac.j

Transition of the Stellar Initial Mass Function Explored with Binary Population Synthesis

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) plays a crucial role in determining the number of surviving stars in galaxies, the chemical composition of the interstellar medium, and the distribution of light in galaxies. A key unsolved question is whether the IMF is universal in time and space. Here we use state-of-the-art results of stellar evolution to show that the IMF of our Galaxy made a transition from an IMF dominated by massive stars to the present-day IMF at an early phase of the Galaxy formation. Updated results from stellar evolution in a wide range of metallicities have been implemented in a binary population synthesis code, and compared with the observations of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars in our Galaxy. We find that applying the present-day IMF to Galactic halo stars causes serious contradictions with four observable quantities connected with the evolution of AGB stars. Furthermore, a comparison between our calculations and the observations of CEMP stars may help us to constrain the transition metallicity for the IMF which we tentatively set at [Fe/H] = -2. A novelty of the current study is the inclusion of mass loss suppression in intermediate-mass AGB stars at low-metallicity. This significantly reduces the overproduction of nitrogen-enhanced stars that was a major problem in using the high-mass star dominated IMF in previous studies. Our results also demonstrate that the use of the present day IMF for all time in chemical evolution models results in the overproduction of Type I.5 supernovae. More data on stellar abundances will help to understand how the IMF has changed and what caused such a transition.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted by MNRAS Lette

Transition of the stellar initial mass function explored using binary population synthesis

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) plays a crucial role in the determination of the number of surviving stars in galaxies, of the chemical composition of the interstellar medium and of the distribution of light in galaxies. A key unsolved question i

Tidal Interactions of Red Giants with Environment Stars in Globular Clusters

We investigate the tidal interactions of a red giant with a main sequence in the dense stellar core of globular clusters by Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method. Two models of 0.8 \msun red giant with the surface radii 20 and 85 R_\sun are used with 0.6 or 0.8M_\sun main sequence star treated as a point mass. We demonstrate that even for the wide encounters that two stars fly apart, the angular momentum of orbital motion can be deposited into the red giant envelope to such an extent as to trigger rotational mixing and to explain the fast rotation observed for the horizontal branch stars, and also that sufficient mass can be accreted on the main sequence stars to disguise their surface convective zone with the matter from the red giant envelope. On the basis of the present results, we discuss the parameter dependence of these transfer characteristics with non-linear effects taken into account, and derive fitting formulae to give the amounts of energy and angular momentum deposited into the red giant and of mass accreted onto the perturber as functions of stellar parameters and the impact parameter of encounter. These formulae are applicable to the encounters not only of the red giants but also of the main sequence stars, and useful in the study of the evolution of stellar systems with the star-star interactions taken into account.Comment: 36 pages, 11 figures, accepte

The Stellar Abundances for Galactic Archaeology (SAGA) Database II - Implications for Mixing and Nucleosynthesis in Extremely Metal-Poor Stars and Chemical Enrichment of the Galaxy

We discuss the characteristics of known extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars in the Galaxy using the Stellar Abundances for Galactic Archaeology (SAGA) database (Suda et al. 2008, PASJ, 60, 1159).The analyses of carbon-enhanced stars in our sample suggest that the nucleosynthesis in AGB stars can contribute to the carbon enrichment in a different way depending on whether the metallicity is above or below [Fe/H] ~ -2.5, which is consistent with the current models of stellar evolution at low metallicity. We find the transition of the initial mass function at [Fe/H] ~ -2 in the viewpoint of the distribution of carbon abundance and the frequency of carbon-enhanced stars. For observed EMP stars, we confirmed that some, not all, of observed stars might have undergone at least two types of extra mixing to change their surface abundances. One is to deplete the lithium abundance during the early phase of red giant branch. Another is to decrease the C/N ratio by one order of magnitude during the red giant branch phase. Observed small scatters of abundances for alpha-elements and iron-group elements suggest that the chemical enrichment of our Galaxy takes place in a well-mixed interstellar medium. We find that the abundance trends of alpha-elements are highly correlated with each other, while the abundances of iron-group elements are subject to different slopes relative to the iron abundance. This implies that the supernova yields of alpha-elements are almost independent of mass and metallicity, while those of iron-group elements have a metallicity dependence or mass dependence with the variable initial mass function.The occurrence of the hot bottom burning in the mass range of 5 <~ M / Msun <~ 6 is consistent with the initial mass function of the Galaxy peaked at ~ 10 - 12 Msun to be compatible with the statistics of carbon enhanced stars with and without s-process element (truncated)Comment: 35 pages, 27 figures, 6 tables, accepted by MNRAS, database to reproduce figures is available at http://saga.sci.hokudai.ac.j