Early Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way Revealed by Ultra Metal-Poor ([Fe/H] < -4.0) Stars

Chemical abundance ratios of ultra metal-poor (UMP; [Fe/H] < -4.0) stars can provide important constraints on the early chemical enrichment of the Milky Way (MW), associated with the nucleosynthesis processes that occurred during the evolution of their progenitors, which are presumably the first generation of stars. Despite their importance, only about thirty UMP stars have been discovered thus far. In an effort to identify such stars additionally, we selected UMP candidates from low-resolution (R ~ 2000) spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), and obtained with Gemini/GRACES high-resolution (R ~ 40,000) spectra of 15 UMP candidates. In this study, we present the results of the chemical abundance analysis of the UMP candidates. Furthermore, we compare the abundance patterns of our UMP stars with those of various metal-poor stars from literature to understand the early chemical evolution of the MW.