Abstract

Recent spectroscopic studies have revealed the presence of numerous carbon-enhanced, metalpoor stars with [Fe/H] < −2.0 that exhibit strong enhancements of s-process elements. These stars are believed to be the result of a binary mass-transfer episode from a former asymptotic giant-branch (AGB) companion that underwent s-process nucleosynthesis. However, several such stars exhibit significantly lower Ba/Eu ratios than solar s-process abundances. This might be explained if there were an additional contribution from the r-process, thereby diluting the Ba/Eu ratio by extra production of Eu. We propose a model in which the double enhancements of r-process and s-process elements originate from a former 8 − 10M ⊙ companion in a wide binary system, which may undergo s-processing during an AGB phase, followed by r-processing during its subsequent supernova explosion. The mass of Eu (as representative of r-process elements) captured by the secondary through the wind from the supernova is estimated, which is assumed to be proportional to the geometric fraction of the secondary (low-mass, main-sequence) star with respect to the primary (exploding) star. We find that the estimated mass is in good agreement with a constraint on the Eu yield per supernova event obtained from a Galactic chemical evolution