Abundance Anomalies in Red Giants

Abstract

The stellar theory is well developed to explain most of the inner workings of stars; however, researchers occasionally come across things that won’t comply with the general understanding. The two such phenomena are anomalously very high lithium and extremely low carbon abundances in red giants. Both problems were identified more than four decades ago, but still, there is no consensus on their origin. I will briefly describe the problem and the recent studies in understanding the origin of these rare groups of stars.