Letter to the Editor

Carbon and oxygen in metal-poor halo stars^⋆

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: amarsi@mpia.de
² Stellar Astrophysics Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
³ Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2611, Australia
⁴ ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), Australia
⁵ Observational Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
⁶ Theoretical Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

Received: 21 October 2018
Accepted: 11 January 2019

Abstract

Carbon and oxygen are key tracers of the Galactic chemical evolution; in particular, a reported upturn in [C/O] towards decreasing [O/H] in metal-poor halo stars could be a signature of nucleosynthesis by massive Population III stars. We reanalyse carbon, oxygen, and iron abundances in 39 metal-poor turn-off stars. For the first time, we take into account 3D hydrodynamic effects together with departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) when determining both the stellar parameters and the elemental abundances, by deriving effective temperatures from 3D non-LTE Hβ profiles, surface gravities from Gaia parallaxes, iron abundances from 3D LTE Fe II equivalent widths, and carbon and oxygen abundances from 3D non-LTE C I and O I equivalent widths. We find that [C/Fe] stays flat with [Fe/H], whereas [O/Fe] increases linearly up to 0.75 dex with decreasing [Fe/H] down to −3.0 dex. Therefore [C/O] monotonically decreases towards decreasing [C/H], in contrast to previous findings, mainly because the non-LTE effects for O I at low [Fe/H] are weaker with our improved calculations.