American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(877), p. 44, 2019
Zenodo, 2018
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Dwarf carbon (dC) stars, main sequence stars showing carbon molecular bands, are an oxymoron. Only AGB stars can dredge carbon into their atmospheres from their cores. However, long-dead AGB stars may have enhanced (or polluted, depending on your mood) their companion stars via mass transfer. Indeed, this is known to be the case for several types of giants showing anomalous abundances, like the CH, Ba, and CEMP-s stars, all of which have a suspiciously high binary frequency. The dC stars may be the enhanced-abundance progenitors of most of these systems, but this requires a demonstrated high binary frequency for dCs. Our Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey, part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV, targeted a large sample of dC stars for repeat spectroscopy to constrain the binary frequency and orbital properties. We analyzed radial velocity (RV) shifts between spectral epochs for a sample of 245 dC stars with a total of 547 spectra. We then compared this dC RV shift distribution to that of a control sample of objects with similar distributions of magnitude, color, and proper motion. Current results show a distinctly wider distribution in RV shifts in the dC stars compared to a well-chosen control sample.