Carbon in red giants in GCs and dSph galaxies

We hypothesize that [C/Fe] (corrected to the initial carbon abundance) declines with increasing [Fe/H] due to the metallicity dependence of the carbon yield of asymptotic giant branch stars and due to the increasing importance of SNe Ia at higher metallicities. We also identified 11 very carbon-rich giants (eight previously known) in three dSphs. However, our selection biases preclude a detailed comparison to the carbon-enhanced fraction of the MW stellar halo.

Nonetheless, the stars with [C/Fe]<+1 in dSphs follow a different [C/Fe] track with [Fe/H] than the halo stars. Specifically, [C/Fe] in dSphs begins to decline at lower [Fe/H] than in the halo. The difference in the metallicity of the [C/Fe] "knee" adds to the evidence from [{alpha}/Fe] distributions that the progenitors of the halo had a shorter timescale for chemical enrichment than the surviving dSphs.