Carbon stars with increased oxygen and nitrogen abundances: hydrostatic dust-free model atmospheres

Abstract

We have computed a grid of hydrostatic spherical COMARCS models for C stars covering metallicities from [Z/H]=0 to -2 and values of the carbon excess [C-O] from 6.41 to 9.15, plus some temperature sequences, where the amount of oxygen and nitrogen is increased relative to a scaled solar element mixture. Such abundance variations may appear during the late stages of stellar evolution. Our study covers changes of [O/Z] and [N/Z] going up to +0.5. Based on the atmospheric structures we have calculated synthetic spectra and photometry for all of the models in a consistent way. The sequences with changed [O/Z] and [N/Z] can be used to derive correction terms, which are applied to the colours predicted for a certain combination of effective temperature, surface gravity, metallicity and carbon excess. If one neglects these shifts in case of a variable oxygen amount, taking [C-O] instead of C/O gives much better results, since the first quantity dominates the formation of many important molecular species. For the warmer C giants with weaker pulsation it is in principle possible to determine [C-O], [O/Z] or [N/Z] from high resolution spectra, when the opacities in the radiative transfer calculations for the models and observable properties are treated consistently. The corresponding changes due to the abundances often become significantly larger than the deviations caused by uncertainties of the stellar parameters or by a optically thin dust shell. Photometric data and low or medium resolution spectra are not sufficient to derive the mentioned quantities.