Chemical Abundances of the Secondary Star in the Black Hole X-Ray Binary V404 Cygni

TL;DR

This study analyzes the chemical composition of the secondary star in the black hole binary V404 Cygni, revealing elemental enhancements and suggesting a supernova origin for the black hole, with implications for understanding stellar explosions.

Contribution

It provides detailed chemical abundance measurements of the secondary star and compares them with supernova/hypernova models to infer the black hole's formation history.

Findings

Oxygen is highly enhanced in the secondary star.

Elemental abundances suggest a supernova or hypernova origin.

Discrepancies in Mg abundance challenge existing models.

Abstract

We present a chemical abundance analysis of the secondary star in the black hole binary V404 Cygni, using Keck I/HIRES spectra. We adopt a $\chi^2$-minimization procedure to derive the stellar parameters, taking into account any possible veiling from the accretion disk. With these parameters we determine the atmospheric abundances of O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, Fe, and Ni. The abundances of Al, Si, and Ti appear to be slightly enhanced when comparing with average values in thin-disk solar-type stars. The O abundance, derived from optical lines, is particularly enhanced in the atmosphere of the secondary star in V404 Cygni. This, together with the peculiar velocity of this system as compared with the Galactic velocity dispersion of thin-disk stars, suggests that the black hole formed in a supernova or hypernova explosion. We explore different supernova/hypernova models having various geometries to study possible contamination of nucleosynthetic products in the chemical abundance pattern of the secondary star. We find reasonable agreement between the observed abundances and the model predictions. However, the O abundance seems to be too high regardless of the choice of explosion energy or mass cut, when trying to fit other element abundances. Moreover, Mg appears to be underabundant for all explosion models, which produces Mg abundances roughly 2 times higher than the observed value.