Chemical enrichment by massive stars

Details Chemical enrichment by massive stars Chemical enrichment by massive stars

Jul 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000newar..44..329i&link_type=abstract

New Astronomy Reviews, Volume 44, Issue 4-6, p. 329-334.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

3

Scientific paper

Heavy element abundances derived from high-quality ground-based and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spectroscopic observations of low-metallicity blue compact galaxies (BCGs) with oxygen abundances 12+log O/H between 7.1 and 8.3 are discussed. None of the heavy element-to-oxygen abundance ratios studied here (C/O, N/O, Ne/O, Si/O, S/O, Ar/O, Fe/O) depend on oxygen abundance for BCGs with 12+log O/H<=7.6 (/Z<=Zsolar/20). This constancy implies that all these heavy elements have a primary origin and are produced by the same massive (/M>=10 Msolar) stars responsible for O production. The dispersion of the C/O and N/O ratios in these galaxies is found to be remarkably small, being only /+/-0.03 dex and /+/-0.02 dex respectively. This very small dispersion is strong evidence against any time-delayed production of C and primary N in the lowest-metallicity BCGs, and hence against production of these elements by intermediate-mass (3 Msolar<=/M/<=9 Msolar) stars at very low metallicities, as commonly thought. In higher metallicity BCGs (7.6<12+log O/H<8.2), the Ne/O, Si/O, S/O, Ar/O and Fe/O abundance ratios retain the same constant value they had at lower metallicities. By contrast, there is an increase of the C/O and N/O ratios along with their dispersions at a given O. We interpret this increase as due to the additional contribution of C and primary N production in intermediate-mass stars, on top of that by high-mass stars. BCGs show the same O/Fe overabundance with respect to the Sun (/~0.4 dex) as galactic halo stars, suggesting the same chemical enrichment history.

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