Accretion of pristine gas and dilution during the formation of multiple-population globular clusters

TL;DR

This paper proposes a model where early supernova-driven winds and subsequent gas mixing in globular clusters explain the formation of multiple stellar populations with varying chemical compositions, especially in massive clusters.

Contribution

It introduces a new mechanism involving supernova winds and gas dynamics to explain multiple populations in globular clusters, including their chemical diversity and correlation with cluster mass.

Findings

Extreme populations form from super-AGB ejecta during wind breakout phase.

Gas mixing after wind breakout leads to intermediate chemical compositions.

The model can account for bimodal iron content in some clusters.

Abstract

We study the interaction of the early spherical GC wind powered by Type II supernovae (SNe II) with the surrounding ambient medium consisting of the gaseous disk of a star forming galaxy at redshift z ~> 2. The bubble formed by the wind eventually breaks out of the disk, and most of the wind moves directly out of the galaxy and is definitively lost. The fraction of the wind moving nearly parallel to the galactic plane carves a hole in the disk which will contract after the end of the SN activity. During the interval of time between the end of the SN explosions and the "closure" of the hole, very O-poor stars (the Extreme population) can form out of the super-AGB (asymptotic giant branch) ejecta collected in the GC center. Once the hole contracts, the AGB ejecta mix with the pristine gas, allowing the formation of stars with an oxygen abundance intermediate between that of the very O-poor stars and that of the pristine gas. We show that this mechanism may explain why Extreme populations are present only in massive clusters, and can also produce a correlation between the spread in helium and the cluster mass. Finally, we also explore the possibility that our proposed mechanism can be extended to the case of multiple populations showing bimodality in the iron content, with the presence of two populations characterized by a small difference in [Fe/H]. Such a result can be obtained taking into account the contribution of delayed SN II.