2MASS J15111324-2130030 metal-poor star abundances

DOI

The rapid neutron-capture or r-process is thought to produce the majority of the heavy elements (Z>30) in extremely metal-poor stars. The same process is also responsible for a significant fraction of the heavy elements in the Sun. This universality of the r-process is one of its characteristic features, as well as one of the most important clues to its astrophysical origin. We report the discovery of an extremely metal-poor field giant with [Sr,Ba/H]~-6.0 and [Sr,Ba/Fe]~-3.0, the lowest abundances of strontium and barium relative to iron ever observed. Despite its low abundances, the star 2MASS J151113.24-213003.0 has [Sr/Ba]=-0.11+/-0.14, therefore its neutron-capture abundances are consistent with the main solar r-process pattern that has [Sr/Ba]=-0.25. It has been suggested that extremely low neutron-capture abundances are a characteristic of dwarf galaxies, and we find that this star is on a highly eccentric orbit with an apocenter >~100kpc that lies in the disk of satellites in the halo of the Milky Way. We show that other extremely metal-poor stars with low [Sr,Ba/H] and [Sr,Ba/Fe] plus solar [Sr/Ba] tend to have orbits with large apocenters, consistent with a dwarf galaxy origin for this class of object. The nucleosynthesis event that produced the neutron-capture elements in 2MASS J151113.24-213003.0 must produce both strontium and barium together in the solar ratio. We exclude contributions from the s-process in intermediate-mass asymptotic giant branch or fast-rotating massive metal-poor stars, pair-instability supernovae, the weak r-process, and neutron-star mergers. We argue that the event was a Pop III or extreme Pop II core-collapse supernova explosion.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.18500179
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/850/179
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/850/179
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/850/179
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/850/179
Provenance
Creator Casey A.R.; Schlaufman K.C.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2018
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy