English

Testing stellar yield prescriptions in OMEGA+: Implications for rising sodium abundances in young thick disc stars

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-12-10 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We recently identified an upturn in [Na/Fe] for the population of Solar-type stars in the Galactic young thick disc (0.3<[Fe/H]<+0.3-0.3 < \mathrm{[Fe/H]} < +0.3) at super-Solar metallicity in data from the GALactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey. In this work, we investigate the origin of this unexplained sodium enrichment ([Na/Fe] 0\approx 0--0.60.6~dex) using the OMEGA++ galactic chemical evolution code. We explore the rise of [Na/Fe] using four combinations of nucleosynthetic yields from the literature, considering contributions from core-collapse supernovae, asymptotic giant branch stars, and Type~Ia supernovae. Our analysis focuses on two possible drivers of the Na enhancement: a metallicity-dependent increase in Na production from core-collapse supernovae at super-Solar metallicities, and enrichment from metal-rich AGB stars. We adopt two sets of Type~Ia supernova yields, one assuming exclusively Chandrasekhar-mass explosions and the other assuming only sub-Chandrasekhar-mass explosions. We find that the assumed Type~Ia explosion scenario has little influence on the resulting [Na/Fe] evolution, and that all chemical evolution models tested fail to reproduce the observed Na enrichment in the young thick-disc population at super-Solar metallicity. Our results suggest a possible ``under-pollution effect'' by Type~Ia supernovae -- the dominant producers of iron -- in the Solar-type stellar population of the Galactic disc. These findings provide a step toward understanding the origin of the anomalous sodium enrichment at super-Solar metallicities in the Galactic disc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.17711,
  title  = {Testing stellar yield prescriptions in OMEGA+: Implications for rising sodium abundances in young thick disc stars},
  author = {Evans K. Owusu and Ashley J. Ruiter and Alex J. Kemp and Sven Buder and Ivo R. Seitenzahl and Nicolas Rodriguez-Segovia and R. Pakmor and Giulia C. Cinquegrana and Nicholas Storm and Philipp Eitner and Maria Bergemann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.17711},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables