Hai-Ning Li

Automatic determination of stellar atmospheric parameters and construction of stellar spectral templates of the Guoshoujing telescope (LAMOST)

A number of spectroscopic surveys have been carried out or are planned to study the origin of the Milky Way. Their exploitation requires reliable automated methods and softwares to measure the fundamental parameters of the stars. Adopting the ULySS package, we have tested the effect of different resolutions and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) on the measurement of the stellar atmospheric parameters (effective temperature Teff, surface gravity log g, and metallicity [Fe/H]). We show that ULySS is reliable for determining these parameters with medium-resolution spectra (R ~ 2000). Then, we applied the method to measure the parameters of 771 stars selected in the commissioning database of the Guoshoujing Telescope (LAMOST). The results were compared with the SDSS/SEGUE Stellar Parameter Pipeline (SSPP), and we derived precisions of 167 K, 0.34 dex, and 0.16 dex for Teff, log g and [Fe/H] respectively. Furthermore, 120 of these stars are selected to construct the primary stellar spectral template library (Version 1.0) of LAMOST, and will be deployed as basic ingredients for the LAMOST automated parametrization pipeline.

Morphological Dependence of Mid-Infrared Properties of SDSS Galaxies in the Spitzer SWIRE Survey

We explore the correlation between morphological types and mid-infrared (MIR) properties of an optically flux-limited sample of 154 galaxies from the Fourth Data Release (DR4) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), cross-correlated with Spitzer SWIRE fields of ELAIS-N1, ELAIS-N2, and the Lockman Hole. Aperture photometry is performed on the SDSS and Spitzer images to obtain optical and MIR properties. The morphological classifications are given based on both visual inspection and bulge-disk decomposition in SDSS g- and r-band images. The average bulge-to-total ratio (B/T) is a smooth function over different morphological types. Both the 8 μm (dust) and 24 μm (dust) luminosities and their relative luminosity ratios to 3.6 μm (MIR dust-to-star ratios) present obvious correlations with both the Hubble T-type and B/T. The early-type galaxies notably differ from the late types in the MIR properties, especially in the MIR dust-to-star ratios. It is suggested that the MIR dust-to-star ratio of either νLν[8 μm (dust)]/νLν[3.6 μm] or νLν[24 μm (dust)]/νLν[3.6 μm] is an effective way to separate the early-type galaxies from the late-type ones. Based on the tight correlation between the stellar mass and the 3.6 μm luminosity, we have derived a formula to calculate the stellar mass from the latter. We have also investigated the MIR properties of both edge-on galaxies and barred galaxies in our sample. Since they present similar MIR properties to the other sample galaxies, they do not influence the MIR properties obtained for the entire sample.

Stellar Mass Estimation Based on IRAC Photometry for Spitzer SWIRE-field Galaxies

We analyze the feasibility of estimating the stellar mass of galaxies by mid-infrared luminosities based on a large sample of galaxies cross-identified from Spitzer SWIRE fields and the SDSS spectrographic survey. We derived the formulae to calculate the stellar mass by using IRAC 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities. The mass-to-luminosity ratios of IRAC 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities are more sensitive to the star formation history of galaxies than to other factors, such as the intrinsic extinction, metallicity and star formation rate. To remove the effect of star formation history, we used g - r color to recalibrate the formulae and obtain a better result. Researchers must be more careful when estimating the stellar mass of low metallicity galaxies using our formulae. Due to the emission from dust heated by the hottest young stars, luminous infrared galaxies present higher IRAC 4.5 μm luminosities compared to IRAC 3.6 μm luminosities. For most of type-II AGNs, the nuclear activity cannot enhance 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities compared with normal galaxies. Star formation in our AGNhosting galaxies is also very weak, almost all of which are early-type galaxies.

Enormous Li Enhancement Preceding Red Giant Phases in Low-mass Stars in the Milky Way Halo*

Li abundances in the bulk of low-mass metal-poor stars are well reproduced by stellar evolution models adopting a constant initial abundance. However, a small number of stars have exceptionally high Li abundances, for which no convincing models have been established. We report on the discovery of 12 very metal-poor stars that have large excesses of Li, including an object having more than 100 times higher Li abundance than the values found in usual objects, which is the the largest excess in metal-poor stars known to date. The sample is distributed over a wide range of evolutionary stages, including five unevolved stars, showing no abundance anomaly in other elements. The results indicate the existence of an efficient process to enrich Li in a small fraction of low-mass stars at the main-sequence or subgiant phase. The wide distribution of Li-rich stars along the red giant branch could be explained by dilution of surface Li by mixing that occurs when the stars evolve into red giants. Our study narrows down the problem to be solved to understand the origins of Li-excess found in low-mass stars, suggesting the presence of unknown process that affects the surface abundances preceding red giant phases.

Discovery of a strongly r -process enhanced extremely metal-poor star LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8

We report the discovery of an extremely metal-poor (EMP) giant, LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8, which exhibits a large excess of r -process elements with [Eu/Fe] ~ +1.16. The star is one of the newly discovered EMP stars identified from the LAMOST low-resolution spectroscopic survey and a high-resolution follow-up observation with the Subaru Telescope. Stellar parameters and elemental abundances have been determined from the Subaru spectrum. Accurate abundances for a total of 23 elements including 11 neutron-capture elements from Sr through Dy have been derived for LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8. The abundance pattern of LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8 in the range of C through Zn is in line with the “normal” population of EMP halo stars, except that it shows a notable underabundance in carbon. The heavy element abundance pattern of LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8 is in agreement with other well studied cool r −II metal-poor giants such as CS 22892−052 and CS 31082−001. The abundances of elements in the range from Ba through Dy match the scaled solar r -process pattern well. LAMOST J110901.22+075441.8 provides the first detailed measurements of neutron-capture elements among r −II stars at such low metallicity with [Fe/H] ≾ −3.4, and exhibits similar behavior as other r −II stars in the abundance ratio of Zr/Eu as well as Sr/Eu and Ba/Eu.

Test observations that search for metal-poor stars with the Guoshoujing Telescope (LAMOST)

Metal-deficient stars are regarded as fossils of the early generation of stars and therefore make crucial observational targets related to stellar astrophysics. They provide fundamental information and insights on properties of the very early stage of the chemical history of the Galaxy and have been investigated for decades. The unique design of the Guoshoujing Telescope (LAMOST), such as its large field and multi-object observational capability, enables it to be an excellent tool for searching for these metal-poor stars in the Milky Way. This work reports the result of test observations which search for metal-poor stars with LAMOST, during which nine candidate metal-poor stars with [Fe/H]≤-1.0 were newly detected based on the low-resolution spectroscopic observations of the LAMOST commissioning data. The sample of stars demonstrates the efficiency of selecting from the input catalog, as well as the ability of LAMOST to enlarge the sample of metal-poor stars in the Milky Way. Furthermore, the sample of stars could be used for future calibrations of the LAMOST stellar parameter pipeline.

A search for strongly Mg-enhanced stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Strongly Mg-enhanced stars with [Mg/Fe] > 1.0 show peculiar abundance patterns and hence are of great interest for our understanding of stellar formation and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. A systematic search for strongly Mg-enhanced stars based on low-resolution (R ≃ 2000) spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is carried out by finding the synthetic spectrum that best matches the observed one in the region of Mg I b lines around λ5170 A via a profile matching method. The advantage of our method is that fitting parameters are refined by reproducing the [Mg/Fe] ratios of 47 stars from the very precise high-resolution spectroscopic (HRS) analysis by Nissen & Schuster; and these parameters are crucial to the precision and validity of the derived Mg abundances. As a further check of our method, Mg abundances are estimated with our method for member stars in four Galactic globular clusters (M92, M13, M3, M71) which cover the same metallicity range as our sample, and the results are in good agreement with those of HRS analysis in the literature. The validation of our method is also demonstrated by the agreement of [Mg/Fe] between our values and those of HRS analysis by Aoki et al. Finally, 33 candidates of strongly Mg-enhanced stars with [Mg/Fe]>1.0 are selected from 14 850 F and G stars. Follow-up observations will be carried out on these candidates with high-resolution spectroscopy by large telescopes in the near future, so as to check our selection procedure and to perform a precise and detailed abundance analysis and to explore the origins of these stars.

LAMOST J221750.59+210437.2: A new member of carbon-enhanced extremely metal-poor stars with excesses of Mg and Si

We report on the elemental abundances of the carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) star J2217+2104 discovered by our metal-poor star survey with LAMOST and Subaru. This object is a red giant having extremely low Fe abundance ([Fe/H]=-4.0) and very large enhancement of C, N, and O with excesses of Na, Mg, Al, and Si. This star is a new example of a small group of such CEMP stars identified by previous studies. We find a very similar abundance pattern for O-Zn in this class of objects that shows enhancement of elements up to Si and normal abundance of Ca and Fe-group elements. Whereas the C/N ratio is different among these stars, the (C+N)/O ratio is similar. This suggests that C was also yielded with similar abundance ratios relative to O-Zn in progenitors, and was later affected by the CN-cycle. By contrast, the heavy neutron-capture elements Sr and Ba are deficient in J2217+2104, compared to the four objects in this class previously studied. This indicates that the neutron-capture process in the early Galaxy, presumably the r-process, has no direct connection to the phenomenon that has formed such CEMP stars. Comparisons of the abundance pattern well determined for such CEMP stars with those of supernova nucleosynthesis models constrain the progenitor mass to be about 25Msun, which is not particularly different from typical mass of progenitors expected for extremely metal-poor stars in general.

The nature of the lithium enrichment in the most Li-rich giant star

About 1% of giant stars1 have anomalously high Li abundances (ALi) in their atmospheres, conflicting directly with the prediction of standard stellar evolution models2. This finding makes the production and evolution of Li in the Universe intriguing, not only in the sense of Big Bang nucleosynthesis3,4 or the interstellar medium5, but also for the evolution of stars. Decades of effort have been put into explaining why such extreme objects exist6–8, yet the origins of Li-rich giants are still being debated. Here, we report the discovery of the most Li-rich giant known to date, with a very high ALi of 4.51. This rare phenomenon was observed coincidentally with another short-term event: the star is experiencing its luminosity bump on the red giant branch. Such a high ALi indicates that the star might be at the very beginning of its Li-rich phase, which provides a great opportunity to investigate the origin and evolution of Li in the Galaxy. A detailed nuclear simulation is presented with up-to-date reaction rates to recreate the Li enrichment process in this star. Our results provide tight constraints on both observational and theoretical points of view, suggesting that low-mass giants can internally produce Li to a very high level through 7Be transportation during the red giant phase.Star TYC 429-2097-1 contains the most lithium of any giant star, but lithium is too fragile to survive in the deep layers of a stellar atmosphere. How does the enrichment arise? Yan et al. rule out external sources (engulfment, accretion), favouring an internal process called ‘extra mixing’.

Lithium-rich very metal-poor stars discovered with LAMOST and Subaru

Lithium is a unique element that is produced in the Big Bang nucleosynthesis but is destroyed by nuclear reactions inside stars. As a result, almost constant lithium abundance is found in unevolved main-sequence metal-poor stars, although the value is systematically lower than that expected from the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis models, whereas lithium abundances of red giants are more than one order of magnitudes lower than those of unevolved stars. There are, however, a small fraction of metal-poor stars that show extremely high lithium abundances, which is not explained by standard stellar evolution models. We have discovered 12 new very metal-poor stars that have enhancement of lithium by more than 10 times compared with typical metal-poor stars at similar evolutionary stages by the large-scale spectroscopic survey with LAMOST and the follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy with the Subaru Telescope. The sample shows a wide distribution of evolutionary stages from subgiants to red giants with the metallicity of −3.3 <[Fe/H]< −1.6. The chemical abundance ratios of other elements have been obtained by our spectroscopic study, and an estimate of the binary frequency by radial velocity monitoring is ongoing. The observational results provide new constraints on the scenarios to explain lithium-rich metal-poor stars, such as extra mixing during the evolution along the red giant branch, mass-transfer from a companion AGB star, and engulfment of planet-like objects. These explanations are very unlikely for at least some of lithium-rich objects in our sample, suggesting a new mechanism that enhances lithium during the low-mass star evolution.Lithium is a unique element that is produced in the Big Bang nucleosynthesis but is destroyed by nuclear reactions inside stars. As a result, almost constant lithium abundance is found in unevolved main-sequence metal-poor stars, although the value is systematically lower than that expected from the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis models, whereas lithium abundances of red giants are more than one order of magnitudes lower than those of unevolved stars. There are, however, a small fraction of metal-poor stars that show extremely high lithium abundances, which is not explained by standard stellar evolution models. We have discovered 12 new very metal-poor stars that have enhancement of lithium by more than 10 times compared with typical metal-poor stars at similar evolutionary stages by the large-scale spectroscopic survey with LAMOST and the follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy with the Subaru Telescope. The sample shows a wide distribution of evolutionary stages from subgiants to red giants with the m...