Related papers: Metal-Poor Stars
Quasars are powerful systems whose spectrum is rich of metal features that allow us to investigate the chemical evolution of galaxies at very high redshift, even close to the reionization epoch. I review the main observational constraints…
Metal-poor stars are a rare and ancient type of stars; Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars are a subset of these celestial bodies that show an enrichment of carbon relative to iron. They are believed to be formed from gas polluted by…
The formation and evolution of light elements in the Universe act as important cosmological constraints. It has long been assumed that the oldest stars of the Galaxy display the primordial Li abundance in their outer layers, although…
Quasar (or QSO) elemental abundances provide unique probes of high-redshift star formation and galaxy evolution. There is growing evidence from both the emission and intrinsic absorption lines that QSO environments have roughly solar or…
By measuring the elemental abundances of a star, we can gain insight into the composition of its initial gas cloud -- the formation site of the star and its planets. Planet formation requires metals, the availability of which is determined…
Dark Stars are the very first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe: the first stars to form (typically at redshifts $z \sim 10-50$) are powered by heating from dark matter (DM) annihilation instead of fusion (if the DM…
This work describes a study of elemental abundances for 30 metal-poor stars whose chemical abundances provide excellent information for setting constraints on models of neutron-capture processes. Based on the abundances of main r- and weak…
We study the spatial distribution of Galactic metal-free stars by combining an extremely high-resolution (7.8 X 10^5 solar masses per particle) Cold Dark Matter N-body simulation of the Milky-Way with a semi-analytic model of metal…
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed…
Metallicity is one of the crucial factors that determine stellar evolution. To characterize the properties of stellar populations one needs to know the fraction of stars forming at different metallicities. Knowing how this fraction evolves…
Understanding the formation of the first stars is one of the frontier topics in modern astrophysics and cosmology. Their emergence signaled the end of the cosmic dark ages, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, leading to a…
Neutron-capture-enhanced, metal-poor stars are of central importance to developing an understanding of the operation of the r-process in the early Galaxy, thought to be responsible for the formation of roughly half of all elements beyond…
Recent observations of r-process-enriched metal-poor star abundances reveal a non-uniform abundance pattern for elements $Z\leq47$. Based on non-correlation trends between elemental abundances as a function of Eu-richness in a large sample…
Ground- and space-based observations of stellar heavy element abundances are providing a clearer picture of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. A large number of (r)apid and (s)low neutron capture process elements, including the first…
The chemical composition of high-redshift galaxies is an important property that gives clues to their past history and future evolution. Measuring abundances in distant galaxies with current techniques is often a challenge, and the…
The formation of the first galaxies at redshifts z ~ 10-15 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of ever increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding their assembly process…
The abundances of r-process elements of very metal-poor stars capture the history of the r-process enrichment in the early stage of star formation in a galaxy. Currently, various types of astrophysical sites including neutron star mergers,…
Metal-poor stars enriched by a single supernova (mono-enriched stars) are direct proof (and provide valuable probes) of supernova nucleosynthesis. Photometric and spectroscopic observations have shown that metal-poor stars have a wide…
Dark matter particles with properties identical to dark matter candidates that are hinted at by several international collaborations dedicated to experimental detection of dark matter (DAMA, COGENT, CRESST and CDMS-II, although not, most…
We report on the discovery of seven low-metallicity stars selected from the Hamburg/ESO Survey, six of which are extremely metal-poor ([Fe/H]<-3.0), with four having [Fe/H]<-3.5. Chemical abundances or upper limits are derived for these…