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| Paper: |
On the Ubiquity of Polluted Dwarfs |
| Volume: |
154, Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun: Tenth Cambridge Workshop |
| Page: |
932 |
| Authors: |
Green, Paul J.; Kurtz, Michael J. |
| Abstract: |
Recent results show that most stars in our Galaxy with photospheric C/O >1 (carbon stars) are not giants but dwarfs. The newly-recognized class of dwarf carbon (dC) stars joins the extended family of stars with peculiar abundances that are now recognized as products of mass-transfer binary (MTB) evolution. The dozen dCs now known span a wide range of evolutionary histories, ages, and abundances. These stars can already provide some much-needed constraints on the formation of AGB C stars in the disk and spheroid populations, and on the parameters characterizing binary evolution there. We now posit two larger but related questions: 1) What are the timescales for mixing in of surface material enriched by accretion? 2) What fraction of C/O <1 dwarfs (dM) have also undergone mass accretion? We sketch some observational ploys that could shed light on these issues. |
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