Extreme Lithium Depletion in Solar Twins: Challenging Non-Standard Mixing Models

TL;DR

This study identifies six solar twins with extreme lithium depletion unexplainable by current models, suggesting a distinct population with a violent evolutionary history and exploring various scenarios like planetary engulfment, binary mergers, and episodic accretion.

Contribution

It reports new lithium-depleted solar twins and evaluates multiple non-standard mixing scenarios, providing insights into stellar evolution and internal mixing processes in Sun-like stars.

Findings

Six new lithium-depleted solar twins identified.

Planet engulfment likely explains Li depletion in only one star.

Episodic accretion models can cause Li depletion without Be loss.

Abstract

Lithium (Li) is a powerful tracer of stellar mixing, gradually depleted in solar twins by non-standard transport below the convective zone. Here, we identify six new solar twins with exceptionally low Li levels that are not explained by current non-standard mixing models and, together with our previously reported anomalous solar twin HIP 8522, suggest a distinct population marked by a violent evolutionary past. Employing high-resolution spectra ($R=60,000 - 165,000$), we infer precise stellar parameters and chemical compositions, including Li abundances. We consider possible scenarios generating enhanced mixing, including planetary engulfment, blue straggler stars (BSSs), and early episodic accretion. Our planet engulfment simulations indicate that only one star may have engulfed an exoplanet, rapidly depleting Li via thermohaline convection. In the BSS scenario, radial velocity data rule out binary mass transfer, revealing no stellar companions but instead two new exoplanets. If these stars are field BSSs, a binary merger is likely though uncertain given that current BSS models focus mostly on stars in open clusters. Using pre-main-sequence episodic accretion models, we find that solar-mass stars can experience enhanced Li depletion without significant beryllium (Be) depletion. This is consistent with the Be abundances measured in two of our stars and represents the most plausible scenario, pending Be measurements for the remaining stars. These unique stars, together with HIP 8522, represent exceptional cases for testing stellar evolution models and probing internal mixing processes in Sun-like stars.