Four-hundred Very Metal-Poor Stars Studied with LAMOST and Subaru. II. Elemental abundances

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive homogeneous analysis of over 20 elements in 385 very metal-poor stars, revealing detailed abundance trends, outliers, and correlations across a wide metallicity range, based on large-scale LAMOST and Subaru data.

Contribution

It is the largest high-resolution VMP star sample analyzed homogeneously, with accurate evolutionary stage determination and new insights into elemental abundance patterns and outliers.

Findings

Confirmed known abundance trends in VMP stars.

Identified new outliers and correlations among elements.

Discovered more r-process-enhanced stars at higher metallicities.

Abstract

We present homogeneous abundance analysis of over 20 elements for 385 very metal-poor (VMP) stars based on the LAMOST survey and follow-up observations with the Subaru Telescope. It is the largest high-resolution VMP sample (including 363 new objects) studied by a single program, and the first attempt to accurately determine evolutionary stages for such a large sample based on Gaia parallaxes. The sample covers a wide metallicity range from [Fe/H]=-1.7 down to [Fe/H]=-4.3, including over 110 objects with [Fe/H]<-3.0. The expanded coverage in evolutionary status makes it possible to define abundance trends respectively for giants and turn-off stars. The newly obtained abundance data confirm most abundance trends found by previous studies, but also provide useful update and new sample of outliers. The Li plateau is seen in -2.5 < [Fe/H] <-1.7 in our sample, whereas the average Li abundance is clearly lower at lower metallicity. Mg, Si, and Ca are overabundant with respect to Fe, showing decreasing trend with increasing metallicity. Comparisons with chemical evolution models indicate that the over-abundance of Ti, Sc, and Co are not well reproduced by current theoretical predictions. Correlations are seen between Sc and alpha-elements, while Zn shows a detectable correlation only with Ti but not with other alpha-elements. The fraction of carbon-enhanced stars ([C/Fe]> 0.7) is in the range of 20-30% for turn-off stars depending on the treatment of objects for which C abundance is not determined, which is much higher than that in giants (~8%). Twelve Mg-poor stars ([Mg/Fe] < 0.0) have been identified in a wide metallicity range from [Fe/H] =-3.8 through -1.7. Twelve Eu-rich stars ([Eu/Fe]> 1.0) have been discovered in -3.4 <[Fe/H]< -2.0, enlarging the sample of r-process-enhanced stars with relatively high metallicity.