Carbon-deficient Red Giants

Carbon-deficient red giants (CDRGs) are a rare class of peculiar red giants, also called "weak G-band" or "weak-CH" stars. Their atmospheric compositions show depleted carbon, a low 12C/13C isotopic ratio, and an overabundance of nitrogen, indicating that the material at the surface has undergone CN-cycle hydrogen-burning. I present Stromgren uvby photometry of nearly all known CDRGs. Barium stars, having an enhanced carbon abundance, exhibit the "Bond-Neff effect"--a broad depression in their energy distributions at ~4000 A, recently confirmed to be due to the CH molecule. This gives Ba II stars unusually low Stromgren c1 photometric indices. I show that CDRGs, lacking CH absorption, exhibit an "anti-Bond-Neff effect": higher c1 indices than normal red giants. Using precise parallaxes from Gaia DR2, I plot CDRGs in the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) and compare them with theoretical evolution tracks. Most CDRGs lie in a fairly tight clump in the CMD, indicating initial masses in the range ~2 to 3.5 Msun, if they have evolved as single stars. It is unclear whether they are stars that have just reached the base of the red-giant branch and the first dredge-up of CN-processed material, or are more highly evolved helium-burning stars in the red-giant clump. About 10% of CDRGs have higher masses of ~4 to 4.5 Msun, and exhibit unusually high rotational velocities. I show that CDRGs lie at systematically larger distances from the Galactic plane than normal giants, possibly indicating a role of binary mass-transfer and mergers. CDRGs continue to present a major puzzle for our understanding of stellar evolution.

Comment: Accepted by Astrophysical Journal