Related papers: Metal-Poor Stars
It has now become recognised that damped Lyman alpha systems play an important role in helping us unravel the origin of chemical elements. In this presentation, we describe the main results of a recently completed survey of the most…
With a sample of 22 metal-poor stars, we demonstrate that the heavy element abundance pattern (Z > 55) is the same as the r-process contributions to the solar nebula. This bolsters the results of previous studies that there is a universal…
We use simple analytic reasoning to identify physical processes that drive the evolution of the cosmic star formation density in cold dark matter universes. Based on our analysis, we formulate a model to characterise the redshift dependence…
I address the issue of dust and gas as seeds for metal-poor star formation by reviewing what we know about star formation in nearby dwarf galaxies and its relationship to the gas and dust. I (try to) speculate on the extent to which…
Stars with higher aluminum and nitrogen enrichment are often the key pieces for the chemical makeup of multiple populations in almost all globular clusters (GCs). There is also compelling observational evidence that some Galactic components…
The most metal-poor stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) can show the nucleosynthetic patterns of one or a few supernovae. These supernovae could have zero metallicity, making metal-poor dSph stars the closest surviving links to…
The chemical elements are created in nuclear fusion processes in the hot and dense cores of stars. The energy generated through nucleosynthesis allows stars to shine for billions of years. When these stars explode as massive supernovae, the…
We performed an uniform spectroscopic analysis of 1111 FGK dwarfs observed as part of the HARPS GTO planet search program. We applied a purely chemical approach, based on [alpha/Fe] ratio, to distinguish the various stellar components in…
The investigation of the metal-poor tail in the Galactic bulge provides unique information on the early Milky Way assembly and evolution. A chemo-dynamical analysis of 17 very metal-poor stars (VMP, [Fe/H] $<-2.0$) selected from the…
An overview of the sources for heavy elements in the early Galaxy is given. It is shown that observations of abundances in metal-poor stars can be used along with a basic understanding of stellar models to guide the search for the source of…
We propose and apply a new classification for the CEMP-no stars, which are "carbon-enhanced metal-poor" stars with no overabundance of s-elements and with [Fe/H] generally inferior or equal to -2.5. This classification is based on the…
We present new observations of copper and zinc abundances in 90 metal-poor stars, belonging to the metallicity range -3< [Fe/H] < -0.5. The present study is based on high resolution spectroscopic measurements collected at the Haute Provence…
Cosmological numerical simulations of galaxy evolution show that accretion of metal-poor gas from the cosmic web drives the star formation in galaxy disks. Unfortunately, the observational support for this theoretical prediction is still…
The emergence of the disc in our Galaxy and the relation of the thick and thin disc formation and evolution is still a matter of debate. The chemo-dynamical characterization of disc stars is key to resolve this question, in particular at…
The first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe may be Dark Stars, powered by dark matter heating rather than by fusion. Weakly interacting massive particles, which are their own antiparticles, can annihilate and provide…
We investigate the frequency and origin of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars in Local Group dwarf galaxies by means of a statistical, data-calibrated cosmological model for the hierarchical build-up of the Milky Way and its dwarf…
The abundances of heavy elements in EMP stars are not well explained by the simple view of an initial basic "rapid" process. In a careful and homogeneous analysis of the "First stars" sample (eighty per cent of the stars have a metallicity…
The process that leads to the formation and early evolution of low-mass stars is in a broad sense well understood theoretically and carefully traced observationally. The largest uncertainties in this framework reside in the poorly known…
We calculate the stellar mass-metallicity relation at five epochs ranging to z~2.3. We quantify evolution in the shape of the mass-metallicity relation as a function of redshift; the mass-metallicity relation flattens at late times. There…
Although the theoretical study of very low metallicity (Z) and metal-free stars is not new, their importance has recently greatly increased since two related fields have been developing rapidly. The first is cosmological simulations of the…