skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Seeding the second star – II. CEMP star formation enriched from faint supernovae
ABSTRACT Carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars are the living fossils holding records of chemical enrichment from early generations of stars. In this work, we perform a set of numerical simulations of the enrichment from a supernova (SN) of a first generation of metal-free (Pop III) star and the gravitational collapse of the enriched cloud, considering all relevant cooling/heating processes and chemical reactions as well as the growth of dust grains. We adopt faint SN models for the first time with progenitor masses MPopIII = 13–$$80 \ {\rm M_{\bigodot }}$$, which yield C-enhanced abundance patterns ([C/Fe] = 4.57–4.75) through mixing and fallback of innermost layers of the ejecta. This model also considers the formation and destruction of dust grains. We find that the metals ejected by the SN can be partly re-accreted by the same dark matter minihalo, and carbon abundance of the enriched cloud A(C) = 3.80–5.06 is lower than the abundance range of observed CEMP stars (A(C) ≳ 6) because the mass of the metals ejected by faint SNe is smaller than normal core-collapse SNe due to extensive fallback. We also find that cloud fragmentation is induced by gas cooling from carbonaceous grains for $$M_{\rm Pop III}= 13 \ {\rm M_{\bigodot }}$$ even with the lowest iron abundance [Fe/H] ∼ −9. This leads to the formation of low-mass stars, and these ‘giga metal-poor’ stars can survive until the present-day Universe and may be found by future observations.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1828187
PAR ID:
10202125
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
497
Issue:
3
ISSN:
0035-8711
Page Range / eLocation ID:
3149 to 3165
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    ABSTRACT Carbon enhanced metal poor (CEMP)-no stars, a subset of CEMP stars ($$\rm [C/Fe]\ge 0.7$$ and $$\rm [Fe/H]\lesssim -1$$) have been discovered in ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies, with $$M_{\rm vir}\approx 10^8{\, \mathrm{ M}_\odot }$$ and $$M_{\ast }\approx 10^3-10^4{\, \mathrm{ M}_\odot }$$ at z = 0, as well as in the halo of the Milky Way (MW). These CEMP-no stars are local fossils that may reflect the properties of the first (Pop III) and second (Pop II) generation of stars. However, cosmological simulations have struggled to reproduce the observed level of carbon enhancement of the known CEMP-no stars. Here, we present new cosmological hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations of isolated UFDs that achieve a gas mass resolution of $$m_{\rm gas}\approx 60{\, \mathrm{ M}_\odot }$$. We include enrichment from Pop III faint supernovae (SNe), with ESN = 0.6 × 1051 erg, to understand the origin of CEMP-no stars. We confirm that Pop III and Pop II stars are mainly responsible for the formation of CEMP and C-normal stars, respectively. New to this study, we find that a majority of CEMP-no stars in the observed UFDs and the MW halo can be explained by Pop III SNe with normal explosion energy (ESN = 1.2 × 1051 erg) and Pop II enrichment, but faint SNe might also be needed to produce CEMP-no stars with $$\rm [C/Fe]\gtrsim 2$$, corresponding to the absolute carbon abundance of $$\rm A(C)\gtrsim 6.0$$. Furthermore, we find that while we create CEMP-no stars with high carbon ratio $$\rm [C/Fe]\approx 3-4$$, by adopting faint SNe, it is still challenging to reproduce CEMP-no stars with extreme level of carbon abundance of $$\rm A(C)\approx 7.0-7.5$$, observed both in the MW halo and UFDs. 
    more » « less
  2. ABSTRACT We report the discovery of SMSS J160540.18−144323.1, a new ultra metal-poor halo star discovered with the SkyMapper telescope. We measure $$\left[\rm {Fe}/\rm {H}\right]= -6.2 \pm 0.2$$ (1D LTE), the lowest ever detected abundance of iron in a star. The star is strongly carbon-enhanced, $$\left[\rm {C}/\rm {Fe}\right] = 3.9 \pm 0.2$$, while other abundances are compatible with an α-enhanced solar-like pattern with $$\left[\rm {Ca}/\rm {Fe}\right] = 0.4 \pm 0.2$$, $$\left[\rm {Mg}/\rm {Fe}\right] = 0.6 \pm 0.2$$, $$\left[\rm {Ti}/\rm {Fe}\right] = 0.8 \pm 0.2$$, and no significant s- or r-process enrichment, $$\left[\rm {Sr}/\rm {Fe}\right] \lt 0.2$$ and $$\left[\rm {Ba}/\rm {Fe}\right] \lt 1.0$$ (3σ limits). Population III stars exploding as fallback supernovae may explain both the strong carbon enhancement and the apparent lack of enhancement of odd-Z and neutron-capture element abundances. Grids of supernova models computed for metal-free progenitor stars yield good matches for stars of about $$10\, \rm M_\odot$$ imparting a low kinetic energy on the supernova ejecta, while models for stars more massive than roughly $$20\, \rm M_\odot$$ are incompatible with the observed abundance pattern. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Supernova (SN) blasts envelop many surrounding stellar systems, transferring kinetic energy to small bodies in the systems. Geologic evidence from60Fe points to recent nearby SN activity within the past several Myr. Here, we model the transfer of energy and resulting orbital changes from these SN blasts to the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, and Saturn’s Phoebe ring. For the Oort Cloud, an impulse approximation shows that a 50 pc SN can eject approximately half of all objects less than 1 cm while altering the trajectories of larger ones, depending on their orbital parameters. For stars closest to SNe, objects up to ∼100 m can be ejected. Turning to the explored solar system, we find that SNe closer than 50 pc may affect Saturn’s Phoebe ring and can sweep away Kuiper Belt dust. It is also possible that the passage of the solar system through a dense interstellar cloud could have a similar effect; a numerical trajectory simulation shows that the location of the dust grains and the direction of the wind (from an SN or interstellar cloud) has a significant impact on whether or not the grains will become unbound from their orbit in the Kuiper Belt. Overall, nearby SNe sweep micron-sized dust from the solar system, though whether the grains are ultimately cast toward the Sun or altogether ejected depends on various factors. Evidence of SN-modified dust grain trajectories may be observed by New Horizons, though further modeling efforts are required. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract Unveiling the chemical fingerprints of the first (Population III, hereafter Pop III) stars is crucial for indirectly studying their properties and probing their massive nature. In particular, very massive Pop III stars explode as energetic pair-instability supernovae (PISNe), allowing their chemical products to escape in the diffuse medium around galaxies, opening the possibility to observe their fingerprints in distant gas clouds. Recently, threez> 6.3 absorbers with abundances consistent with an enrichment from PISNe have been observed with JWST. In this Letter, we present novel chemical diagnostics to uncover environments mainly imprinted by PISNe. Furthermore, we revise the JWST low-resolution measurements by analyzing the publicly available high-resolution X-Shooter spectra for two of these systems. Our results reconcile the chemical abundances of these absorbers with those from literature, which are found to be consistent with an enrichment dominated (>50% metals) by normal Pop II SNe. We show the power of our novel diagnostics in isolating environments uniquely enriched by PISNe from those mainly polluted by other Pop III and Pop II SNe. When the subsequent enrichment from Pop II SNe is included, however, we find that the abundances of PISN-dominated environments partially overlap with those predominantly enriched by other Pop III and Pop II SNe. We dub these areas confusion regions. Yet, the odd–even abundance ratios [Mg,Si/Al] are extremely effective in pinpointing PISN-dominated environments and allowed us to uncover, for the first time, an absorber consistent with a combined enrichment by a PISN and another Pop III SN for all the six measured elements. 
    more » « less
  5. ABSTRACT Very metal-poor stars that have [Fe/H] < −2 and that are enhanced in C relative to Fe ([C/Fe] > +0.7) but have no enhancement of heavy elements ([Ba/Fe] < 0) are known as carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP-no) stars. These stars are thought to be produced from a gas that was polluted by the supernova (SN) ejecta of the very first generation (Population III) massive stars. The very high enrichment of C (A(C) ≳ 6) observed in many of the CEMP-no stars is difficult to explain by current models of SN explosions from massive Population III stars when a reasonable dilution of the SN ejecta, which is consistent with detailed simulation of metal mixing in minihaloes, is adopted. We explore rapidly rotating Population III stars that undergo efficient mixing and reach a quasi-chemically homogeneous (QCH) state. We find that QCH stars can eject large amounts of C in the wind and that the resulting dilution of the wind ejecta in the interstellar medium can lead to a C enrichment of A(C) ≲ 7.75. The core of QCH stars can produce up to an order of magnitude of more C than non-rotating progenitors of similar mass and the resulting SN can lead to a C enrichment of A(C) ≲ 7. Our rapidly rotating massive Population III stars cover almost the entire range of A(C) observed in CEMP-no stars and are a promising site for explaining the high C enhancement in the early Galaxy. Our work indicates that a substantial fraction of Population III stars were likely rapid rotators. 
    more » « less