Modelling the chemical enrichment of Population III supernovae: The origin of the metals in near-pristine gas clouds

Abstract

The most metal-poor, high redshift damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) provide a window to study some of the first few generations of stars. In this paper, we present a novel model to investigate the chemical enrichment of the near-pristine DLA population. This model accounts for the mass distribution of the enriching stellar population, the typical explosion energy of their supernovae, and the average number of stars that contribute to the enrichment of these DLAs. We conduct a maximum likelihood analysis of these model parameters using the observed relative element abundances ([C/O], [Si/O], and [Fe/O]) of the 11 most metal-poor DLAs currently known. We find that the mass distribution of the stars that have enriched this sample of metal-poor DLAs can be well-described by a Salpeter-like IMF slope at M > 10 M_sun and that a typical metal-poor DLA has been enriched by < 72 massive stars (95 per cent confidence), with masses < 40 M_sun. The inferred typical explosion energy (E_exp = 1.8^{+0.3}_{-0.2}x10^51 erg) is somewhat lower than that found by recent works that model the enrichment of metal-poor halo stars. These constraints suggest that some of the metal-poor DLAs in our sample may have been enriched by Population II stars. Using our enrichment model, we also infer some of the typical physical properties of the most metal-poor DLAs. We estimate that the total stellar mass content is log10(M_*/M_sun) = 3.5^{+0.3}_{-0.4} and the total gas mass is log10(M_gas/M_sun) = 7.0^{+0.3}_{-0.4} for systems with a relative oxygen abundance [O/H] ~ -3.0.

arXiv commentProofed version. Updated Fig 3

References in corpus (66)

• The chemical composition of the Sun
• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• How Massive Single Stars End their Life
• The observed properties of dwarf galaxies in and around the Local Group
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• Star Formation Histories, Abundances and Kinematics of Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Group
• First stars V - Abundance patterns from C to Zn and supernova yields in the early Galaxy
• The Formation of the First Stars. I. The Primordial Star Forming Cloud
• A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A Critical Look at Variations
• How small were the first cosmological objects?
• Updated stellar yields from Asymptotic Giant Branch models
• Nucleosynthesis and Evolution of Massive Metal-Free Stars
• The Dawes Review 2: Nucleosynthesis and stellar yields of low and intermediate-mass single stars
• One Hundred First Stars : Protostellar Evolution and the Final Masses
• Nucleosynthesis of Zinc and Iron-Peak Elements in Pop III Type II Supernovae : Comparison with abundances of Very Metal-Poor Halo Stars
• Near-Field Cosmology with Metal-Poor Stars
• A comprehensive Maximum Likelihood analysis of the structural properties of faint Milky Way satellites
• A Search for Stars of Very Low Metal Abundance. VI. Detailed Abundances of 313 Metal-Poor Stars
• On The Cosmic Origins Of Carbon And Nitrogen
• Forged in FIRE: cusps, cores, and baryons in low-mass dwarf galaxies
• Explosive yields of massive stars from Z=0 to Z=Zsun
• The Formation of Population III Binaries from Cosmological Initial Conditions
• Stellar Models and Yields of Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star
• Gravitational fragmentation in turbulent primordial gas and the initial mass function of Population III stars
• A Survey About Nothing: Monitoring a Million Supergiants for Failed Supernovae
• The Pristine survey I: Mining the Galaxy for the most metal-poor stars
• Building up the Population III initial mass function from cosmological initial conditions
• High Resolution Study of Presupernova Compactness
• The First Galaxies: Chemical Enrichment, Mixing, and Star Formation
• Effects of rotation on the evolution of primordial stars
• A Simple Approach to the Supernova Progenitor-Explosion Connection
• Evolution of massive population III stars with rotation and magnetic fields
• Three-Dimensional Simulations of Neutrino-Driven Core-Collapse Supernovae from Low-Mass Single and Binary Star Progenitors
• The stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO survey. IV. Selection of candidate metal-poor stars
• The First Supernova Explosions in the Universe
• A Successful 3D Core-Collapse Supernova Explosion Model
• The most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha systems: Insights into chemical evolution in the very metal-poor regime
• Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years after the Big Bang
• The Search for Failed Supernovae with The Large Binocular Telescope: First Candidates
• Dust in High Redshift Galaxies
• C, N, O Abundances in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• The First Supernova Explosions: Energetics, Feedback, and Chemical Enrichment
• Three-Dimensional Supernova Explosion Simulations of 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-, and 13-M${}_{\odot }$ Stars
• The Rapid Decline in Metallicity of Damped Ly-alpha Systems at z~5
• A Homogeneous Sample of Sub-DLAs I: Construction of the Sample and Chemical Abundance Measurements
• Presupernova evolution and explosive nucleosynthesis of zero metal massive stars
• Zn and Cr abundances in damped Lyman alpha systems from the CORALS survey
• The EMBLA Survey -- Metal-poor stars in the Galactic bulge
• The extremely low-metallicity tail of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy
• Preserving chemical signatures of primordial star formation in the first low-mass stars
• What determines galactic evolution?
• The most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha systems: An insight into dwarf galaxies at high redshift
• The First Stars
• The nature of proximate damped Lyman alpha systems
• The metal-poor Knee in the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Gone without a bang: An archival HST survey for disappearing massive stars
• The Mass Distribution of Population III Stars
• Detection of 21-cm, H2 and Deuterium absorption at z>3 along the line-of-sight to J1337+3152
• Discovery of the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha system
• The most metal-poor damped Ly alpha system at z<3: constraints on early nucleosynthesis
• A study of low-metallicity DLAs at high redshift and C II* as a probe of their physical conditions
• The Impact of Helium-Burning Reaction Rates on Massive Star Evolution and Nucleosynthesis
• Possible Population III Remnants at Redshift 3.5
• Exploring the origins of a new, apparently metal-free gas cloud at z = 4.4
• New Astrophysical Reaction Rate for the ${}^{12}\text{C}(\alpha ,\gamma {)}^{16}\text{O}$ Reaction

Cited by in corpus (21)

• MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) -- I: Survey design and the environment of a near pristine gas cloud at z~3.5
• Grids of stellar models with rotation: V. Models from 1.7 to 120 Msun at zero metallicity
• MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) -- V: Linking ionized gas traced by CIV and SiIV absorbers to Ly$\alpha$ emitting galaxies at $z\approx 3.0-4.5$
• Machine learning detects multiplicity of the first stars in stellar archaeology data
• Simulating Metal Mixing of Both Common and Rare Enrichment Sources in a Low Mass Dwarf Galaxy
• A bound on the 12C/13C ratio in near-pristine gas with ESPRESSO
• Evidence of First Stars-enriched Gas in High-redshift Absorbers
• Modelling the cosmological Lyman-Werner background radiation field in the Early Universe
• Oxygen-enhanced extremely metal-poor DLAs: A signpost of the first stars?
• External Enrichment of Minihalos by the First Supernovae
• Gravitational waves from mergers of Population III binary black holes: roles played by two evolution channels
• The stochastic enrichment of Population II stars
• Chemical Diagnostics to Unveil Environments Enriched by First Stars
• Towards ultra metal-poor DLAs: linking the chemistry of the most metal-poor DLA to the first stars
• Connecting Primordial Star Forming Regions and Second Generation Star Formation in the Phoenix Simulations
• Empirical Constraints on Core Collapse Supernova Yields using Very Metal Poor Damped Lyman Alpha Absorbers
• Investigation of the Prompt SNe Ia progenitor nature through the analysis of the chemical composition of globular clusters and circumgalactic clouds
• A limit on Planck-scale froth with ESPRESSO
• The Diversity of Metal-Enrichment and Abundance Patterns at High Redshift: A Magellan Survey of Gas-rich Galaxies Traced by Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers at z~5
• Simulating the collapse of rotating primordial gas clouds to study the survival possibility of Pop III protostars
• Discovery of three new near-pristine absorption clouds at $z=2.6$-4.4