Discovery of Carbon/Oxygen-depleted Blue Straggler Stars in 47 Tucanae: The Chemical Signature of a Mass Transfer Formation Process

Abstract

We use high-resolution spectra obtained with the ESO Very Large Telescope to measure surface abundance patterns of 43 blue straggler stars (BSSs) in 47 Tuc. We discovered that a subpopulation of BSSs shows a significant depletion of carbon and oxygen with respect to the dominant population. This evidence would suggest the presence of CNO burning products on the BSS surface coming from a deeply peeled parent star, as expected in the case of a mass transfer process. This is the first detection of a chemical signature clearly pointing to a specific BSS formation process in a globular cluster.