The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Chemical Abundances of Stars in the Halo (CASH) Project. I. The Lithium-, s-, and r-enhanced Metal-poor Giant HKII 17435-00532
Abstract
We present the first detailed abundance analysis of the metal-poor giant HKII 17435-00532. This star was observed as part of the University of Texas long-term project Chemical Abundances of Stars in the Halo (CASH). A spectrum was obtained with the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope with a resolving power of R ~ 15,000. Our analysis reveals that this star may be located on the red giant branch, red horizontal branch, or early asymptotic giant branch. We find that this metal-poor ([Fe/H] = - 2.2) star has an unusually high lithium abundance [log ɛ (Li) = + 2.1], mild carbon ([C/Fe] = + 0.7) and sodium ([Na/Fe] = + 0.6) enhancement, as well as enhancement of both s-process ([Ba/Fe] = + 0.8) and r-process ([Eu/Fe] = + 0.5) material. The high Li abundance can be explained by self-enrichment through extra mixing that connects the convective envelope with the outer regions of the H-burning shell. If so, HKII 17435-00532 is the most metal-poor star in which this short-lived phase of Li enrichment has been observed. The Na and n-capture enrichment can be explained by mass transfer from a companion that passed through the thermally pulsing AGB phase of evolution with only a small initial enrichment of r-process material present in the birth cloud. Despite the current nondetection of radial velocity variations (over ~180 days), it is possible that HKII 17435-00532 is in a long-period or highly inclined binary system, similar to other stars with similar n-capture enrichment patterns.
Based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- June 2008
- DOI:
- 10.1086/587794
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0802.3701
- Bibcode:
- 2008ApJ...679.1549R
- Keywords:
-
- nuclear reactions;
- nucleosynthesis;
- abundances;
- stars: abundances;
- stars: individual: HKII 17435–00532;
- stars: Population II;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 29 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. A full version of table 3 is available from the first author upon request