Preserving chemical signatures of primordial star formation in the first low-mass stars

Understand

We model early star forming regions and their chemical enrichment by Population III (Pop III) supernovae with nucleosynthetic yields featuring high [C/Fe] ratios and pair-instability supernova (PISN) signatures.

• We aim to test how well these chemical abundance signatures are preserved in the gas prior to forming the first long-lived low-mass stars (or second-generation stars).
• Our results show that second-generation stars can retain the nucleosynthetic signature of their Pop III progenitors, even in the presence of nucleosynthetically normal Pop III core-collapse supernovae.
• We find that carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars are likely second-generation stars that form in minihaloes.