arXiv subjects

Miho N. Ishigaki

Publications and source records attributed to Miho N. Ishigaki.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Cerium features in kilonova near-infrared spectra: implication from a chemically peculiar star

Observations of the kilonova from a neutron star merger event GW170817 opened a way to directly study r-process nucleosynthesis by neutron star mergers. It is, however, challenging to identify the individual elements in the kilonova spectra due to lack of complete atomic data, in particular, at near-infrared wavelengths. In this paper, we demonstrate that spectra of chemically peculiar stars with enhanced heavy element abundances can provide us with an excellent astrophysical laboratory for kilonova spectra. We show that the photosphere of a late B-type chemically peculiar star HR 465 has similar lanthanide abundances and ionization degrees with those in the line forming region in a kilonova at $\sim 2.5$ days after the merger. The near-infrared spectrum of HR 465 taken with Subaru/IRD indicates that Ce III lines give the strongest absorption features around 16,000 A and there are no other comparably strong transitions around these lines. The Ce III lines nicely match with the broad absorption features at 14,500 A observed in GW170817 with a blueshift of v=0.1c, which supports recent identification of this feature as Ce III by Domoto et al. (2022).

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arXiv2023

Machine learning detects multiplicity of the first stars in stellar archaeology data

In unveiling the nature of the first stars, the main astronomical clue is the elemental compositions of the second generation of stars, observed as extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars, in our Milky Way Galaxy. However, no observational constraint was available on their multiplicity, which is crucial for understanding early phases of galaxy formation. We develop a new data-driven method to classify observed EMP stars into mono- or multi-enriched stars with Support Vector Machines. We also use our own nucleosynthesis yields of core-collapse supernovae with mixing-fallback that can explain many of observed EMP stars. Our method predicts, for the first time, that $31.8\% \pm 2.3\%$ of 462 analyzed EMP stars are classified as mono-enriched. This means that the majority of EMP stars are likely multi-enriched, suggesting that the first stars were born in small clusters. Lower metallicity stars are more likely to be enriched by a single supernova, most of which have high carbon enhancement. We also find that Fe, Mg. Ca, and C are the most informative elements for this classification. In addition, oxygen is very informative despite its low observability. Our data-driven method sheds a new light on solving the mystery of the first stars from the complex data set of Galactic archaeology surveys.

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arXiv2022

Existence of Tidal Tails for the Globular Cluster NGC 5824

Context. Several dynamically cold streams have been associated with certain globular clusters (GCs) based on orbital energies and angular momenta. Some of these streams are surprisingly far apart from their progenitors and one such pair is Triangulum and NGC 5824. Triangulum can be considered as a piece of NGC 5824 leading tail since the cluster's future orbit matches with the stream's track well. The existence of the leading tail for NGC 5824 is the motivation behind the search for its trailing tail. Aims. Our goal is to confirm the connection between Triangulum and NGC 5824 and seek the trailing tail of the cluster. Methods. The selection of member stars of Triangulum is made through various cuts in metallicity, proper motions (PMs), radial velocity and color-magnitude diagram (CMD). The selected members are compared in phase space to a mock stream which models the disruption of NGC 5824. We then try to detect the trailing tail of the cluster based on a modified matched-filter technique. Stars are assigned weights using their color differences from the cluster's locus in CMD. These weights are further scaled based on stars' departures from expected PMs of the model stream. Results. A total of 26 member stars for Triangulum are obtained and 16 of them are newly identified. These members are consistent with the mock stream in the phase space and their metalicity and position on the CMD are in good agreements with NGC 5824. By applying the matched-filter, a tenuous trailing tail of the cluster is detected, spanning $\sim$ 50$^\circ$ long on sky. The signature matches with the mock stream's trajectory well. Conclusions. Our results support that Triangulum stream acts as a part of the leading tail for NGC 5824. On the trailing side, we have detected a 50$^\circ$ tail extended from the cluster. The existence of both leading and trailing tails for the GC NGC 5824 is verified.

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arXiv2022

Revisit NGC 5466 Tidal Stream with $Gaia$, SDSS/SEGUE and LAMOST

By mining the data from $Gaia$ EDR3, SDSS/SEGUE DR16 and LAMOST DR8, 11 member stars of the NGC 5466 tidal stream are detected and 7 of them are newly identified. To reject contaminators, a variety of cuts are applied in sky position, color-magnitude diagram, metallicity, proper motion and radial velocity. We compare our data to a mock stream generated by modeling the cluster's disruption under a smooth Galactic potential plus the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The concordant trends in phase-space between the model and observations imply that the stream might have been perturbed by LMC. The two most distant stars among 11 detected members trace the stream's length to $60^\circ$ of sky, supporting and extending the previous length of $45^\circ$. Given that NGC 5466 is so distant and potentially has a longer tail than previously thought, we expect that NGC 5466 tidal stream could be a useful tool in constraining the Milky Way gravitational field.

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arXiv2022

Four-hundred Very Metal-Poor Stars Studied with LAMOST and Subaru. II. Elemental abundances

We present homogeneous abundance analysis of over 20 elements for 385 very metal-poor (VMP) stars based on the LAMOST survey and follow-up observations with the Subaru Telescope. It is the largest high-resolution VMP sample (including 363 new objects) studied by a single program, and the first attempt to accurately determine evolutionary stages for such a large sample based on Gaia parallaxes. The sample covers a wide metallicity range from [Fe/H]=-1.7 down to [Fe/H]=-4.3, including over 110 objects with [Fe/H]<-3.0. The expanded coverage in evolutionary status makes it possible to define abundance trends respectively for giants and turn-off stars. The newly obtained abundance data confirm most abundance trends found by previous studies, but also provide useful update and new sample of outliers. The Li plateau is seen in -2.5 < [Fe/H] <-1.7 in our sample, whereas the average Li abundance is clearly lower at lower metallicity. Mg, Si, and Ca are overabundant with respect to Fe, showing decreasing trend with increasing metallicity. Comparisons with chemical evolution models indicate that the over-abundance of Ti, Sc, and Co are not well reproduced by current theoretical predictions. Correlations are seen between Sc and alpha-elements, while Zn shows a detectable correlation only with Ti but not with other alpha-elements. The fraction of carbon-enhanced stars ([C/Fe]> 0.7) is in the range of 20-30% for turn-off stars depending on the treatment of objects for which C abundance is not determined, which is much higher than that in giants (~8%). Twelve Mg-poor stars ([Mg/Fe] < 0.0) have been identified in a wide metallicity range from [Fe/H] =-3.8 through -1.7. Twelve Eu-rich stars ([Eu/Fe]> 1.0) have been discovered in -3.4 <[Fe/H]< -2.0, enlarging the sample of r-process-enhanced stars with relatively high metallicity.

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arXiv2022

Four-hundred Very Metal-poor Stars studied with LAMOST and Subaru. I. Survey Design, Follow-up Program, and Binary Frequency

The chemical abundances of very metal-poor stars provide important constraints on the nucleosynthesis of the first generation of stars and early chemical evolution of the Galaxy. We have obtained high-resolution spectra with the Subaru Telescope for candidates of very metal-poor stars selected with a large survey of Galactic stars carried out with LAMOST. In this series of papers, we report on the elemental abundances of about 400 very metal-poor stars and discuss the kinematics of the sample obtained by combining the radial velocities measured in this study and recent astrometry obtained with Gaia. This paper provides an overview of our survey and follow-up program, and reports radial velocities for the whole sample. We identify seven double-lined spectroscopic binaries from our high-resolution spectra, for which radial velocities of the components are reported. We discuss the frequency of such relatively short-period binaries at very low metallicity.

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arXiv2021

Top-heavy stellar mass distribution in galactic nuclei inferred from the universally high abundance ratio of [Fe/Mg]

Recent observations of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have shown a high Fe~II/Mg~II line-flux ratio in their broad-line regions, nearly independent of redshift up to $z \gtrsim 6$. The high flux ratio requires rapid production of iron in galactic nuclei to reach an abundance ratio of ${\rm [Fe/Mg]} \gtrsim 0.2$ as high as those observed in matured galaxies in the local universe. We propose a possible explanation of rapid iron enrichment in AGNs by massive star formation that follows a top-heavy initial mass function (IMF) with a power-law index of $Γ$ larger than the canonical value of $Γ=-2.35$ for a Salpeter IMF. Taking into account metal production channels from different types of SNe, we find that the high value of ${\rm [Fe/Mg]} \gtrsim 0.2$ requires the IMF to be characterized with $Γ\gtrsim -1$ ($Γ\gtrsim 0$) and a high-mass cutoff at $M_{\rm max} \simeq 100$--$150~{\rm M_\odot}$ $(M_{\rm max} \gtrsim 250~{\rm M_\odot})$. Given the conditions, core-collapse SNe with $M_\ast \gtrsim 70~{\rm M_\odot}$ and pair-instability SNe give a major contribution for iron enrichment. Such top-heavy stellar IMFs would be a natural consequence from mass growth of stars formed in dense AGN disks under Bondi-like gas accretion that is regulated by feedback at $M_\ast \gtrsim 10~{\rm M_\odot}$. The massive stellar population formed in AGN disks also leave stellar-mass black hole remnants, whose mergers associated with gravitational-wave emission account for at most 10 \% of the merger rate inferred from LIGO/Virgo observations to simultaneously explain the high ${\rm [Fe/Mg]}$ ratio with metal ejection.

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arXiv2021

Origin of metals in old Milky Way halo stars based on GALAH and Gaia

Stellar and supernova nucleosynthesis in the first few billion years of the cosmic history have set the scene for early structure formation in the Universe, while little is known about their nature. Making use of stellar physical parameters measured by GALAH Data Release 3 with accurate astrometry from the Gaia EDR3, we have selected $\sim 100$ old main-sequence turn-off stars (ages $\gtrsim 12$ Gyrs) with kinematics compatible with the Milky Way stellar halo population in the Solar neighborhood. Detailed homogeneous elemental abundance estimates by GALAH DR3 are compared with supernova yield models of Pop~III (zero-metal) core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), normal (non-zero-metal) CCSNe, and Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) to examine which of the individual yields or their combinations best reproduce the observed elemental abundance patterns for each of the old halo stars ("OHS"). We find that the observed abundances in the OHS with [Fe/H]$>-1.5$ are best explained by contributions from both CCSNe and SN~Ia, where the fraction of SN~Ia among all the metal-enriching SNe is up to 10-20 % for stars with high [Mg/Fe] ratios and up to 20-27 % for stars with low [Mg/Fe] ratios, depending on the assumption about the relative fraction of near-Chandrasekhar-mass SNe Ia progenitors. The results suggest that, in the progenitor systems of the OHS with [Fe/H]$>-1.5$, $\sim$ 50-60% of Fe mass originated from normal CCSNe at the earliest phases of the Milky Way formation. These results provide an insight into the birth environments of the oldest stars in the Galactic halo.

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arXiv2020

The mass of our Milky Way

We perform an extensive review of the numerous studies and methods used to determine the total mass of the Milky Way. We group the various methods into seven broad classes, including: i) estimating Galactic escape velocity using high velocity objects; ii) measuring the rotation curve through terminal and circular velocities; iii) modeling halo stars, globular clusters and satellite galaxies with the Spherical Jeans equation and iv) with phase-space distribution functions; v) simulating and modeling the dynamics of stellar streams and their progenitors; vi) modeling the motion of the Milky Way, M31 and other distant satellites under the framework of Local Group timing argument; and vii) measurements made by linking the brightest Galactic satellites to their counterparts in simulations. For each class of methods, we introduce their theoretical and observational background, the method itself, the sample of available tracer objects, model assumptions, uncertainties, limits and the corresponding measurements that have been achieved in the past. Both the measured total masses within the radial range probed by tracer objects and the extrapolated virial masses are discussed and quoted. We also discuss the role of modern numerical simulations in terms of helping to validate model assumptions, understanding systematic uncertainties and calibrating the measurements. While measurements in the last two decades show a factor of two scatters, recent measurements using \textit{Gaia} DR2 data are approaching a higher precision. We end with a detailed discussion of future developments, especially as the size and quality of the observational data will increase tremendously with current and future surveys. In such cases, the systematic uncertainties will be dominant and thus will necessitate a much more rigorous testing and characterization of the various mass determination methods.

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arXiv2020

$J$-factor estimation of Draco, Sculptor and Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxies with the member/foreground mixture model

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are promising targets of indirect detection experiments searching for dark matter (DM) at present universe. Toward robust prediction for the amount of signal flux originating in DM annihilation inside dSphs, a precise determination of DM distributions as well as $J$-factors of the dSphs is particularly important. In this work, we estimate those of Draco, Sculptor, and Ursa Minor dSphs by an improved statistical method in which both foreground stars and dSph member stars are simultaneously taken into account. We define the likelihood function of the method as the so-called conditional one to remove sampling bias of observed stellar data. This improved method enables us to estimate DM distributions and $J$-factors of the dSphs directly from observed stellar data contaminated by foreground stars without imposing stringent membership criteria on the measured quantities.

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arXiv2019

Chemical abundances of field halo stars -- Implications for the building blocks of the Milky Way

I would like to review recent efforts of detailed chemical abundance measurements for field Milky Way halo stars. Thanks to the advent of wide-field spectroscopic surveys up to a several kpc from the Sun, large samples of field halo stars with detailed chemical measurements are continuously expanding. Combination of the chemical information and full six dimensional phase-space information is now recognized as a powerful tool to identify cosmological accretion events that have built a sizable fraction of the present-day stellar halo. Future observational prospects with wide-field spectroscopic surveys and theoretical prospects with supernova nucleosynthetic yields are also discussed.

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arXiv2019

Boötes IV: A New Milky Way Satellite Discovered in the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey and Implications for the Missing Satellite Problem

We report on the discovery of a new Milky Way (MW) satellite in Boötes based on data from the on-going Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP). This satellite, named Boötes IV, is the third ultra-faint dwarf that we have discovered in the HSC-SSP. We have identified a statistically significant (32.3$σ$) overdensity of stars having characteristics of a metal-poor, old stellar population. The distance to this stellar system is $D_{\odot}=209^{+20}_{-18}$ kpc with a $V$-band absolute magnitude of $M_V=-4.53^{+0.23}_{-0.21}$ mag. Boötes IV has a half-light radius of $r_h=462^{+98}_{-84}$ pc and an ellipticity of $0.64^{+0.05}_{-0.05}$, which clearly suggests that this is a dwarf satellite galaxy. We also found another overdensity that appears to be a faint globular cluster with $M_V=-0.20^{+0.59}_{-0.83}$ mag and $r_h=5.9^{+1.5}_{-1.3}$ pc located at $D_{\odot}=46^{+4}_{-4}$ kpc. Adopting the recent prediction for the total population of satellites in a MW-sized halo by Newton et al. (2018), which combined the characteristics of the observed satellites by SDSS and DES with the subhalos obtained in $Λ$CDM models, we estimate that there should be about two MW satellites at $M_V\le0$ in the $\sim676$ deg$^2$ covered by HSC-SSP, whereas that area includes six satellites. Thus, the observed number of satellites is larger than the theoretical prediction. On the face of it, we have a problem of too many satellites, instead of the well-known missing satellites problem whereby the $Λ$CDM theory overpredicts the number of satellites in a MW-sized halo. This may imply that the models need more refinements for the assignment of subhalos to satellites such as considering those found by the current deeper survey. [abridged]

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arXiv2019

Evidence for the accretion origin of halo stars with an extreme r-process enhancement

Small stellar systems like dwarf galaxies are suggested to be the main building blocks of our Galaxy by numerical simulations in Lambda CDM models. The existence of star streams like Sagittarius tidal stream indicates that dwarf galaxies play a role in the formation of the Milky Way. However, it is unclear how many and what kind of stars in our Galaxy are originated from satellite dwarf galaxies, which could be constrained by chemical abundances of metal-poor stars. Here we report on the discovery of a metal-poor star with an extreme r-process enhancement and alpha-element deficiency. In this star, the abundance ratio of the r-process element Eu with respect to Fe is more than one order of magnitude higher than the Sun and the metallicity is 1/20 of the solar one. Such kind of stars have been found in present-day dwarf galaxies, providing the clearest chemical signature of past accretion events. The long timescale of chemical evolution of the host dwarf galaxy expected from the abundance of alpha element with respect to Fe suggests that the accretion occurred in a relatively late phase compared to most of the accretions that formed the bulk of the Milky Way halo.

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arXiv2018

Fingerprint of the first stars: multi-enriched extremely metal-poor stars in the TOPoS survey

Extremely metal poor (EMP) stars in the Milky Way inherited the chemical composition of the gas out of which they formed. They therefore carry the chemical fingerprint of the first stars in their spectral lines. It is commonly assumed that EMP stars form from gas that was enriched by only one progenitor supernova ('mono-enriched'). However, recent numerical simulations show that the first stars form in small clusters. Consequently, we expect several supernovae to contribute to the abundances of an EMP star ('multi-enriched'). We analyse seven recently observed EMP stars from the TOPoS survey by applying the divergence of the chemical displacement and find that J1035+0641 is mono-enriched ($p_{mono}=53\%$) and J1507+0051 is multi-enriched ($p_{mono}=4\%$). For the remaining five stars we can not make a distinct prediction ($p_{mono} \lesssim 50\%$) due to theoretical and observational uncertainties. Further observations in the near-UV will help to improve our diagnostic and therefore contribute to constrain the nature of the first stars.

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arXiv2018

Foreground effect on the $J$-factor estimation of ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are promising targets for the gamma-ray dark matter (DM) search. In particular, DM annihilation signal is expected to be strong in some of the recently discovered nearby ultra-faint dSphs, which potentially give stringent constraints on the $\mathcal{O}(1)$ TeV WIMP DM. However, various non-negligible systematic uncertainties complicate the estimation of the astrophysical factors relevant for the DM search in these objects. Among them, the effects of foreground stars particularly attract attention because the contamination is unavoidable even for the future kinematical survey. In this article, we assess the effects of the foreground contamination on the astrophysical $J$-factor estimation by generating mock samples of stars in the four ultra-faint dSphs and using a model of future spectrographs. We investigate various data cuts to optimize the quality of the data and apply a likelihood analysis which takes member and foreground stellar distributions into account. We show that the foreground star contaminations in the signal region (the region of interest) and their statistical uncertainty can be estimated by interpolating the foreground star distribution in the control region where the foreground stars dominate the member stars. Such regions can be secured at future spectroscopic observations utilizing a multiple object spectrograph with a large field of view; e.g. the Prime Focus Spectrograph mounted on Subaru Telescope. The above estimation has several advantages: The data-driven estimation of the contamination makes the analysis of the astrophysical factor stable against the complicated foreground distribution. Besides, foreground contamination effect is considered in the likelihood analysis.

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arXiv2018

Descendants of the first stars: the distinct chemical signature of second generation stars

Extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars in the Milky Way (MW) allow us to infer the properties of their progenitors by comparing their chemical composition to the metal yields of the first supernovae. This method is most powerful when applied to mono-enriched stars, i.e. stars that formed from gas that was enriched by only one previous supernova. We present a novel diagnostic to identify this subclass of EMP stars. We model the first generations of star formation semi-analytically, based on dark matter halo merger trees that yield MW-like halos at the present day. Radiative and chemical feedback are included self-consistently and we trace all elements up to zinc. Mono-enriched stars account for only $\sim 1\%$ of second generation stars in our fiducial model and we provide an analytical formula for this probability. We also present a novel analytical diagnostic to identify mono-enriched stars, based on the metal yields of the first supernovae. This new diagnostic allows us to derive our main results independently from the specific assumptions made regarding Pop III star formation, and we apply it to a set of observed EMP stars to demonstrate its strengths and limitations. Our results may provide selection criteria for current and future surveys and therefore contribute to a deeper understanding of EMP stars and their progenitors.

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arXiv2018

Optical high-resolution spectroscopy of 14 young $α$-rich stars

We report chemical abundances of 14 young $α$-rich stars including neutron-capture elements based on high-quality optical spectra from HIRES/Keck I and differential line-by-line analysis. From the comparison of the abundance patterns of young $α$-rich stars to those of nearby bright red giants with a similar metallicity range ($-0.7<[\mathrm{Fe/H}]<-0.2$), we confirm their high $α$-element abundances reported by previous studies based on near-infrared spectroscopy. We reveal for the first time low abundances of $s$-process elements and high abundances of $r$-process elements. All the abundances are consistent with those seen in typical $α$-rich population of the Galactic disk, and no abundance anomalies are found except for Li-enhancement in one object previously reported and mild enhancement of Na in two stars. In particular, the lack of $s$-process enhancement excludes the hypothesis that mass transfer from asymptotic giant branch stars plays an important role in the formation of young $α$-rich stars. The high frequency of radial velocity variation (more than $50\%$) is also confirmed. We argue that mass transfer from low-mass red giants is the likely dominant formation mechanism for young $α$-rich stars.

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arXiv2018

The Initial mass function of the first stars inferred from extremely metal-poor stars

We compare elemental abundance patterns of $\sim 200$ extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H]$<-3$) stars with supernova yields of metal-free stars in order to obtain insights into the characteristic masses of the first (Population III or Pop III) stars in the Universe. Supernova yields are prepared with nucleosynthesis calculations of metal-free stars with various initial masses ($M=$13, 15, 25, 40 and 100 $M_{\odot}$) and explosion energies ($E_{51}=E/10^{51}$[erg]$=0.5-60$) to include low-energy, normal-energy, and high-energy explosions. We adopt the mixing-fallback model to take into account possible asymmetry in the supernova explosions and the yields that best-fit the observed abundance patterns of the EMP stars are searched by varying the model parameters. We find that the abundance patterns of the EMP stars are predominantly best-fitted with the supernova yields with initial masses $M<40 M_{\odot}$, and that more than than half of the stars are best fitted with the $M=25 M_\odot$ hypernova ($E_{51}=10$) models. The results also indicate that the majority of the primordial supernovae have ejected $10^{-2}-10^{-1} M_\odot$ of $^{56}$Ni leaving behind a compact remnant, either a neutron star or a black hole, with mass in a range of $\sim 1.5-5 M_{\odot}$. The results suggest that the masses of the first stars responsible for the first metal-enrichment are predominantly $< 40 M_{\odot}$. This implies that the higher mass first stars were either less abundant or directly collapsing into a blackhole without ejecting heavy elements or that a supernova explosion of a higher-mass first star inhibits the formation of the next generation of low-mass stars at [Fe/H]$<-3$.

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