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The Origin of Carbon Enhancement and the Initial Mass Function of Extremely Metal-poor Stars in the Galactic Halo
It is known that the carbon-enhanced, extremely metal-poor (CEMP) starsconstitute a substantial proportion of the extremely metal-poor (EMP)stars of the Galactic halo, and a by far larger proportion than CH starsamong Population II stars. We investigate their origin by taking intoaccount an additional evolutionary path to the surface carbonenrichment, triggered by hydrogen engulfment by the helium flashconvection, in EMP stars with [Fe/H]<~-2.5. This process is distinctfrom the third dredge-up operating in more metal-rich stars and in EMPstars. In binary systems of EMP stars, the secondary stars become CEMPstars through mass transfer from the low- and intermediate- mass primarystars that have developed the surface carbon enhancement. Our binaryscenario can predict the variations in the abundances not only forcarbon but also for nitrogen and s-process elements and can reasonablyexplain the observed properties such as the stellar distributions of thecarbon abundances, the binary periods, and the evolutionary stages.Furthermore, from the observed frequencies of CEMP stars with andwithout s-process element enhancement, we demonstrate that the initialmass function of EMP stars needed gives the mean mass~10Msolar under the reasonable assumptions for the distributionsof orbital separations and mass ratios of the binary components. Thisalso indicates that the currently observed EMP stars were exclusivelyborn as the secondary members of binaries, making up ~10% of EMP binarysystems, with mass~108 Msolar in total; inaddition to CEMP stars with white dwarf companions, a significantfraction of them have experienced supernova explosions of theircompanions. We discuss the implications of the present results for theformation of the Galactic halo.
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