Carbon Enhancement in the Galaxy -- A New Probe of the First Stars

Timothy Beers

Recent large surveys of metal-poor stars in the Galaxy have revealed that a surprising fraction of them are enhanced in their carbon-to-iron ratios by factors of from 10-10,000 relative to the solar ratio. Although most of the stars in the metallicity interval -2.7 < [Fe/H] < -2.0 are likely to have arisen from Asymptotic Giant Branch processing (and subsequent dumping via mass transfer to a surviving companion), there exist many stars with [Fe/H[ < -3.0 (including the two lowest [Fe/H] stars known, with [Fe/H] < -5.0) that cannot be accounted for by this process. Rather, primordial (or nearly primordial) progenitors are implicated.

I report on the existing information from present surveys, and describe the results that will come from the recently-funded extension of the SDSS, which includes the program SEGUE = Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration. SEGUE will identify some 20,000 stars with [Fe/H] < -2.0, several thousand of which are expected to be carbon enhanced.