Related papers: Heavy Elements in the Early Galaxy
Recent observations have revealed a population of $\alpha$-element abundances enhanced giant stars with unexpected high masses ($\gtrsim$1 $M_\odot$) from asteroseismic analysis and spectroscopy. Assuming single-star evolution, their masses…
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…
The oldest, most metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo and satellite dwarf galaxies present an opportunity to explore the chemical and physical conditions of the earliest star forming environments in the Universe. We review the fields of…
Dwarf galaxies like Sagittarius (Sgr) provide a unique window into the early stages of galactic chemical evolution, particularly through their metal-poor stars. By studying the chemical abundances of stars in the Sgr core and tidal streams,…
The first stars are assumed to be predominantly massive. Although, due to the low initial abundances of heavy elements the line-driven stellar winds are supposed to be inefficient in the first stars, these stars may loose a significant…
A few rare halo giants in the range [Fe/H] $\simeq -2.9\pm0.3$ exhibit {\it r}-process element abundances that vary as a group by factors up to [$r$/Fe] $\sim80$, relative to those of the iron peak and below. Yet, the astrophysical…
There are many candidate sites of the r-process: core-collapse supernovae (including rare magnetorotational core-collapse supernovae), neutron star mergers, and neutron star/black hole mergers. The chemical enrichment of…
The existence of neutron star mergers has been supported since the discovery of the binary pulsar and the observation of its orbital energy loss, consistent with General Relativity. They are considered nucleosynthesis sites of the rapid…
Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars are the living fossils with records of chemical enrichment history at the early epoch of galaxy formation. By the recent large observation campaigns, statistical samples of EMP stars have been obtained. This…
Carbon enhanced metal poor (CEMP) stars with low abundances of neutron capture elements (CEMP-no stars) are ubiquitous among metal poor stars in the Milky Way. Recent observations have uncovered their two subgroups that differ in the carbon…
The recent discovery of a hyper metal-poor (HMP) star, whose metallicity Fe/H is smaller than 1/100,000 of the solar ratio, together with one earlier HMP star, has raised a challenging question if these HMP stars are the actual first…
Metal-poor stars hold the key to our understanding of the origin of the elements and the chemical evolution of the Universe. This chapter describes the process of discovery of these rare stars, the manner in which their surface abundances…
It has been noted that, in classical extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars, the abundance ratio of Sr and Ba, is always higher than [Sr/Ba] = -0.5, the value of the solar r-only process; however, a handful of EMP stars have recently been found…
A long sought after goal using chemical abundance patterns derived from metal-poor stars is to understand the Galactic chemical evolution (GCE) and to pin down the nature of the first stars (Pop III). Here, we use a sample of 14 metal-poor…
Little is known about the origin of the fastest stars in the Galaxy. Our understanding of the Milky Way and surrounding dwarf galaxies chemical evolution history allows us to use the chemical composition of a star to investigate its origin,…
A substantial fraction of metal-poor stars in the local Milky Way halo exhibit large overabundances of carbon. These stars, dubbed Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars, provide crucial constraints on the nature of the early universe…
The abundance patterns of the most metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo and small dwarf galaxies provide us with a wealth of information about the early Universe. In particular, these old survivors allow us to study the nature of the first…
We have carried out a detailed abundance analysis for a sample of 16 carbon stars found among candidate extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars from the Hamburg/ESO Survey. We find that the Fe-metallicities for the cooler C-stars (Teff ~ 5100K)…
Recent detailed simulations of Galactic Chemical Evolution have shown that the heavy elements, in particular [Fe/H], are expected to exhibit a weak, or absent, correlation with stellar ages in the early Galaxy due to the lack of efficient…
The origin of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars and their possible connections with the chemical elements produced by the first stellar generations is still highly debated. We briefly review observations of CEMP stars in different…