The impact of very massive stars on the chemical evolution of extremely metal-poor galaxies

Abstract

In recent observations of extremely metal-poor low-mass starburst galaxies, almost solar Fe/O ratios are reported, despite N/O ratios consistent with the low metallicity. We investigate if the peculiar Fe/O ratios can be a distinctive signature of an early enrichment produced by very massive objects dying as Pair-Instability Supernovae (PISN). We run chemical evolution models with yields that account for the contribution by PISN. We use both the recent non-rotating stellar yields from Goswami et al. 2021, and new yields from rotating very massive stars calculated on purpose in this work. We also search for the best initial mass function (IMF) that is able to reproduce the observations. We can reproduce the observations by adopting a bi-modal IMF and by including an initial burst of rotating very massive stars. Only with a burst of very massive stars can we reproduce the almost solar Fe/O ratios at the estimated young ages. We also confirm that rotation is absolutely needed to concomitantly reproduce the observed N/O ratios. These results stress the importance of very massive stars in galactic chemical evolution studies and strongly support a top-heavy initial mass function in the very early evolutionary stages of metal poor starburst galaxies.

12 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (38)

• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• Pre-Supernova Evolution of Massive Single and Binary Stars
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 Msun stellar mass limit
• Fragmentation of star-forming clouds enriched with the first dust
• An excess of massive stars in the local 30 Doradus starburst
• Paving the way for the JWST: witnessing globular cluster formation at z>3
• The Birth of a Galaxy. II. The Role of Radiation Pressure
• C, N, O Abundances in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• Formation of GW190521 from stellar evolution: the impact of the hydrogen-rich envelope, dredge-up and ${}^{12}$C($\alpha$, $\gamma$)${}^{16}$O rate on the pair-instability black hole mass gap
• Gravitationally Lensed Galaxies at 2<z<3.5: Direct Abundance Measurements of Lya Emitters
• Evidence for a Hard Ionizing Spectrum from a z=6.11 Stellar Population
• The AMBRE Project: chemical evolution models for the Milky Way thick and thin discs
• Binary Population Synthesis
• The Low Mass End of the Fundamental Relation for Gravitationally Lensed Star Forming Galaxies at 1<z<6
• Modelling the spectral energy distribution of ULIRGs II: The energetic environment and the dense interstellar medium
• Life and times of dwarf spheroidal galaxies
• APOGEE DR16: a multi-zone chemical evolution model for the Galactic disc based on MCMC methods
• Mixing by overshooting and rotation in intermediate mass stars
• Carbon star formation as seen through the non-monotonic initial-final mass relation
• Extremely Metal-Poor Representatives Explored by the Subaru Survey (EMPRESS). I. A Successful Machine Learning Selection of Metal-Poor Galaxies and the Discovery of a Galaxy with M*<10^6 M_sun and 0.016 Z_sun
• The effect of differential galactic winds on the chemical evolution of galaxies
• Evaluating and Improving Semi-analytic modelling of Dust in Galaxies based on Radiative Transfer Calculations
• Probing the existence of very massive first stars
• Explosion and nucleosynthesis of low redshift pair instability supernovae
• J1234+3901: an extremely metal-deficient compact star-forming dwarf galaxy at redshift 0.133
• EMPRESS. IV. Extremely Metal-Poor Galaxies (EMPGs) Including Very Low-Mass Primordial Systems with M*=10^4--10^5 M_sun and 2--3% (O/H)_sun: High (Fe/O) Suggestive of Metal Enrichment by Hypernovae/Pair-Instability Supernovae
• EMPRESS. II. Highly Fe-Enriched Metal-poor Galaxies with $\sim 1.0$ (Fe/O)${}_{\odot }$ and $0.02$ (O/H)${}_{\odot }$ : Possible Traces of Super Massive ($>300M_{\odot }$) Stars in Early Galaxies
• On the variation of carbon abundance in galaxies and its implications
• The Little Cub: Discovery of an Extremely Metal-Poor Star-Forming Galaxy in the Local Universe
• Fluorine in the solar neighborhood: modelling the Galactic thick and thin discs
• Modelling the chemical evolution of Zr, La, Ce and Eu in the Galactic discs and bulge
• The effect of clouds in a galactic wind on the evolution of gas-rich dwarf galaxies
• On the effects of the Initial Mass Function on Galactic chemical enrichment
• EMPRESS. III. Morphology, Stellar Population, and Dynamics of Extremely Metal Poor Galaxies (EMPGs): Are EMPGs Local Analogs of High-$z$ Young Galaxies?
• Combining Physical galaxy models with radio observations to constrain the SFRs of high-z dusty star forming galaxies
• Nitrogen evolution in the halo, thick disc, thin disc and bulge of the Galaxy
• Modelling the chemical evolution of the Milky Way

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Nebular emission from young stellar populations including binary stars
• Evolutionary tracks, ejecta, and ionizing photons from intermediate-mass to very massive stars with PARSEC
• The locations of features in the mass distribution of merging binary black holes are robust against uncertainties in the metallicity-dependent cosmic star formation history
• A Study of Primordial Very Massive Star Evolution
• Massive binary black holes from Population II and III stars
• Gas-phase Fe/O and Fe/N abundances in Star-Forming Regions. Relations between nucleosynthesis, metallicity and dust
• Trading oxygen for iron I: the [O/Fe] -- specific star formation rate relation of galaxies
• The chemical evolution of the solar neighbourhood for planet-hosting stars
• Signatures of Rapidly Rotating Stars with Chemically Homogeneous Evolution in the First Galaxies
• A Study of Primordial Very Massive Star Evolution. II. Stellar Rotation and Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitors
• On the Contribution of Very Massive Stars to the Sulfur Abundance in Star-Forming Galaxies: the Role of PISN
• Merger Conditions of Population III Protostar Binaries
• Impact of Population III stars on the astrophysical gravitational-wave background
• Evolutionary models for the Very Massive Stars in the R136 cluster of 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud