Jurassic: A Chemically Anomalous Structure in the Galactic Halo

TL;DR

This paper identifies and analyzes a unique population of silicon-enhanced, metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo, providing detailed chemical abundance patterns to explore their origins and relation to globular clusters and halo substructures.

Contribution

It reports the discovery and detailed chemical analysis of 55 new Si-rich field stars, expanding understanding of their origins and connection to Galactic halo substructures.

Findings

Identified 55 new Si-rich stars with extreme [Si/Fe] overabundance.

Confirmed the presence of a significant, chemically peculiar stellar sub-population.

Provided detailed elemental abundance patterns across multiple elements.

Abstract

Detailed elemental-abundance patterns of giant stars in the Galactic halo measured by APOGEE-2 have revealed the existence of a unique and significant stellar sub-population of silicon-enhanced ([Si/Fe]$\gtrsim +0.5$) metal-poor stars, spanning a wide range of metallicities ($-1.5\lesssim$[Fe/H]$\lesssim-0.8$). Stars with over-abundances in [Si/Fe] are of great interest because these have very strong silicon ($^{28}$Si) spectral features for stars of their metallicity and evolutionary stage, offering clues about rare nucleosynthetic pathways in globular clusters (GCs). Si-rich field stars have been conjectured to have been evaporated from GCs, however, the origin of their abundances remains unclear, and several scenarios have been offered to explain the anomalous abundance ratios. These include the hypothesis that some of them were born from a cloud of gas previously polluted by a progenitor that underwent a specific and peculiar nucleosynthesis event, or due to mass transfer from a previous evolved companion. However, those scenarios do not simultaneously explain the wide gamut of chemical species that are found in Si-rich stars. Instead, we show that the present inventory of such unusual stars, as well as their relation to known halo substructures (including the in-situ halo, \textit{Gaia}-Enceladus, the Helmi Stream(s), and Sequoia, among others), is still incomplete. We report the chemical abundances of the iron-peak (Fe), the light- (C and N), the $\alpha-$ (O and Mg), the odd-Z (Na and Al), and the \textit{s}-process (Ce and Nd) elements of 55 newly identified Si-rich field stars (among more than $\sim$600,000 APOGEE-2 targets), that exhibit over-abundance of [Si/Fe] as extreme as those observed in some Galactic GCs, and are relatively cleanly from other stars in the [Si/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane. This new census confirms the presence of a statistically significant ...