Elevated r-process Enrichment in Gaia Sausage and Sequoia*

Abstract

The Gaia Sausage (GS) and the Sequoia represent the major accretion events that formed the stellar halo of the Milky Way. A detailed chemical study of these main building blocks provides a pristine view of the early steps of the Galaxy’s assembly. We present the results of the analysis of the UVES high-resolution spectroscopic observations at the 8.2 m VLT of nine Sausage/Sequoia members selected kinematically using Gaia DR2. We season this set of measurements with archival data from Nissen & Schuster and GALAH DR3 (2020). Here, we focus on the neutron-capture process by analyzing Sr, Y, Ba, and Eu behavior. We detect clear enhancement in Eu abundance ([Eu/Fe] ∼ 0.6–0.7) indicative of large prevalence of the r-process in the stellar n-capture makeup. We are also able to trace the evolution of the heavy element production across a wide range of metallicity. The barium to europium changes from a tight, flat sequence with [Ba/Eu] = −0.7 reflecting dominant contribution from exploding massive stars, to a clear upturn at higher iron abundances, betraying the onset of contamination from asymptotic giant branch (AGB) ejecta. Additionally, we discover two clear sequences in the [Fe/H]−[Ba/Fe] plane likely caused by distinct levels of s -process pollution and mixing within the GS progenitor.