Extremely Metal-Poor Star Candidates in the SDSS

TL;DR

This study develops a method to identify ultra-metal-poor star candidates from SDSS data by measuring spectral lines and correcting for NLTE effects, successfully finding stars with [Fe/H] < -4.0.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new approach combining low-resolution spectra analysis and NLTE corrections to accurately identify ultra-metal-poor stars from SDSS data.

Findings

Six ultra-metal-poor star candidates identified, including one with the lowest metallicity ever measured.

Metallicity estimates from Ca II K lines agree well with high-resolution spectra.

Corrected Mg I b and Ca II triplet lines improve metallicity accuracy.

Abstract

For a sample of metal-poor stars (-3.3< [Fe/H] <-2.2) that have high-resolution spectroscopic abundance determinations, we have measured equivalent widths (EW) of the Ca II K, Mg I b and near-infrared (NIR) Ca II triplet lines using low-resolution spectra of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), calculated effective temperatures from (g-z)0 color, deduced stellar surface gravities by fitting stellar isochrones, and determined metallicities based on the aforementioned quantities. Metallicities thus derived from the Ca II K line are in much better agreement with the results determined from high-resolution spectra than the values given in the SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7). The metallicities derived from the Mg I b lines have a large dispersion owing to the large measurement errors, whereas those deduced from the Ca II triplet lines are too high due to both non-local thermodynamical equilibrium (NLTE) effects and measurement errors. Abundances after corrected for the NLTE effect for the Mg I b lines and Ca II triplet lines are also presented. Following this method, we have identified six candidates of ultra-metal-poor stars with [Fe/H] <-4.0 from a sample of 166 metal-poor star candidates. One of them, SDSS J102915+172927, was recently confirmed to be an ultra-metal-poor ([Fe/H] < -4.0) star with the lowest metallicity ever measured. Follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy for the other five ultra-metal-poor stars in our sample will therefore be of great interest.