The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Jan 2024)

Spectacular Nucleosynthesis from Early Massive Stars

  • Alexander P. Ji,
  • Sanjana Curtis,
  • Nicholas Storm,
  • Vedant Chandra,
  • Kevin C. Schlaufman,
  • Keivan G. Stassun,
  • Alexander Heger,
  • Marco Pignatari,
  • Adrian M. Price-Whelan,
  • Maria Bergemann,
  • Guy S. Stringfellow,
  • Carla Fröhlich,
  • Henrique Reggiani,
  • Erika M. Holmbeck,
  • Jamie Tayar,
  • Shivani P. Shah,
  • Emily J. Griffith,
  • Chervin F. P. Laporte,
  • Andrew R. Casey,
  • Keith Hawkins,
  • Danny Horta,
  • William Cerny,
  • Pierre Thibodeaux,
  • Sam A. Usman,
  • João A. S. Amarante,
  • Rachael L. Beaton,
  • Phillip A. Cargile,
  • Cristina Chiappini,
  • Charlie Conroy,
  • Jennifer A. Johnson,
  • Juna A. Kollmeier,
  • Haining Li,
  • Sarah Loebman,
  • Georges Meynet,
  • Dmitry Bizyaev,
  • Joel R. Brownstein,
  • Pramod Gupta,
  • Sean Morrison,
  • Kaike Pan,
  • Solange V. Ramirez,
  • Hans-Walter Rix,
  • José Sánchez-Gallego

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ad19c4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 961, no. 2
p. L41

Abstract

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Stars that formed with an initial mass of over 50 M _⊙ are very rare today, but they are thought to be more common in the early Universe. The fates of those early, metal-poor, massive stars are highly uncertain. Most are expected to directly collapse to black holes, while some may explode as a result of rotationally powered engines or the pair-creation instability. We present the chemical abundances of J0931+0038, a nearby low-mass star identified in early follow-up of the SDSS-V Milky Way Mapper, which preserves the signature of unusual nucleosynthesis from a massive star in the early Universe. J0931+0038 has a relatively high metallicity ([Fe/H] = −1.76 ± 0.13) but an extreme odd–even abundance pattern, with some of the lowest known abundance ratios of [N/Fe], [Na/Fe], [K/Fe], [Sc/Fe], and [Ba/Fe]. The implication is that a majority of its metals originated in a single extremely metal-poor nucleosynthetic source. An extensive search through nucleosynthesis predictions finds a clear preference for progenitors with initial mass >50 M _⊙ , making J0931+0038 one of the first observational constraints on nucleosynthesis in this mass range. However, the full abundance pattern is not matched by any models in the literature. J0931+0038 thus presents a challenge for the next generation of nucleosynthesis models and motivates the study of high-mass progenitor stars impacted by convection, rotation, jets, and/or binary companions. Though rare, more examples of unusual early nucleosynthesis in metal-poor stars should be found in upcoming large spectroscopic surveys.

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