Related papers: The most iron-deficient stars as the polluted popu…
The most metal-poor stars are the relics of the early chemical evolution of the Galaxy. Their chemical composition is an important tool to constrain the nucleosynthesis in the first generation of stars. The aim is to observe a sample of…
The most metal-poor stars in the Milky Way witnessed the early phases of formation of the Galaxy, and have chemical compositions that are close to the pristine mixture from Big Bang nucleosynthesis, polluted by one or few supernovae. Only…
Metal-poor stars are key for studying the formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Evidence of the early mergers that built up the Galaxy remains in the distributions of abundances, kinematics, and orbital parameters of its stars. Several…
Extremely metal-poor stars are uniquely informative on the nature of massive Population III stars. Modulo a few elements that vary with stellar evolution, the present-day photospheric abundances observed in extremely metal-poor stars are…
New observations from the Hubble ultra deep field suggest that the star formation rate at z>7 drops off faster than previously thought. Using a newly determined star formation rate for the normal mode of Population II/I stars (PopII/I),…
For a sample of metal-poor stars (-3.3< [Fe/H] <-2.2) that have high-resolution spectroscopic abundance determinations, we have measured equivalent widths (EW) of the Ca II K, Mg I b and near-infrared (NIR) Ca II triplet lines using…
We compare the metallicities of stars with radial velocity planets to the metallicity of a sample of field dwarfs. We confirm recent work indicating that the stars-with-planet sample as a whole is iron rich. However, the lowest mass stars…
Hydrodynamical cosmological simulations predict that the metal-free Population III (Pop III) stars were likely very massive and, therefore, short-lived. However, they left their chemical imprint on their descendants, which can also have…
The chemical composition of stars with extremely low metal contents (taking ``metals'' to mean all elements other than hydrogen and helium) provides us with information on the masses of the stars that produced the first metals. Such a…
Extremely metal poor stars have been the focus of much recent attention owing to the expectation that their chemical abundances can shed light on the metal and dust yields of the earliest supernovae. We present our most realistic simulation…
We describe the discovery of HE 1327-2326, a dwarf or subgiant with [Fe/H]}=-5.4. The star was found in a sample of bright metal-poor stars selected from the Hamburg/ESO survey. Its abundance pattern is characterized by very high C and N…
Two alternative scenarios concerning the origin and evolution of extremely metal-poor halo stars are investigated. The first one assumes that the stars have been completely metal-free initially and produced observed carbon and nitrogen…
We conduct a comprehensive investigation of the detectability of the first stars and their enrichment signatures in galaxy clusters. We show that the mean metallicity of outflows from objects containing these Population III (PopIII) stars…
We discuss in detail the evolutionary properties of low mass stars M< 1 M(Solar) having metallicity lower than Z=10^(-6) from the pre- main sequence up to (almost) the end of the Asymptotic Giant Branch phase. We also discuss the…
Recent discoveries of carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars like SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 provide increasing observational insights into the formation conditions of the first second-generation stars in the Universe, reflecting the chemical…
The most metal-poor stars record the earliest metal enrichment triggered by Population III stars. By comparing observed abundance patterns with theoretical yields of metal-free stars, physical properties of their first star progenitors can…
We present an analysis of the UVES high-resolution spectroscopic observations at the 8.2m VLT of J0023+0307, a main-sequence extremely iron-poor dwarf star. We are unable to detect iron lines in the spectrum but derive [Fe/H]<-6.1 from the…
The external pollution of the first stars in the Galaxy is investigated. The first stars were born in clouds composed of the pristine gas without heavy elements. These stars accreted gas polluted with heavy elements while they still…
Simple, one-zone models for inhomogeneous chemical evolution of the Galactic halo are used to predict the number fraction of zero-metallicity, Population III stars, which currently is empirically estimated at < 4e-4. These analytic models…
Cosmological simulations of Population III star formation suggest an initial mass function (IMF) biased toward very massive stars (M>100Msun) formed in minihalos at redshift z>20, when the cooling is driven by molecular hydrogen. However,…