Wind Roche-lobe overflow: Application to carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars

TL;DR

This study investigates how wind Roche-lobe overflow (WRLOF) influences the formation and characteristics of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, showing that WRLOF increases predicted CEMP fractions and affects orbital periods.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new implementation of WRLOF in binary population synthesis models, improving predictions of CEMP star fractions and properties.

Findings

CEMP star predictions increase by 20-80% with WRLOF

Higher carbon enrichment levels are achieved

Orbital period distribution shifts to shorter periods

Abstract

Carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars (CEMP) are observed as a substantial fraction of the very metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo. Most CEMP stars are also enriched in s-process elements and these are often found in binary systems. This suggests that the carbon enrichment is due to mass transfer in the past from an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star on to a low-mass companion. Models of binary population synthesis are not able to reproduce the observed fraction of CEMP stars without invoking non-standard nucleosynthesis or a substantial change in the initial mass function. This is interpreted as evidence of missing physical ingredients in the models. Recent hydrodynamical simulations show that efficient wind mass transfer is possible in the case of the slow and dense winds typical of AGB stars through a mechanism called wind Roche-lobe overflow (WRLOF), which lies in between the canonical Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) accretion and Roche-lobe overflow. WRLOF has an effect on the accretion efficiency of mass transfer and on the angular momentum lost by the binary system. The aim of this work is to understand the overall effect of WRLOF on the population of CEMP stars. To simulate populations of low-metallicity binaries we combined a synthetic nucleosynthesis model with a binary population synthesis code. In this code we implemented the WRLOF mechanism. We used the results of hydrodynamical simulations to model the effect of WRLOF on the accretion efficiency and we took the effect on the angular momentum loss into account by assuming a simple prescription. As a result the number of CEMP stars predicted by our model increases by a factor 1.2-1.8 compared to earlier results that consider the BHL prescription. Moreover, higher enrichments of carbon are produced and the final orbital period distribution is shifted towards shorter periods.