Blue Straggler Surface Abundances: A Clue to Their Formation History?

Blue stragglers have been a puzzle since they were first discovered. It has become clear that in order to form them multiple stars need to interact. The two most common formation mechanisms involve stellar collisions and binary mass transfer. It has been proposed that these two formation channels can be distinguished by looking at the surface abundances of the blue straggler. However, there have been no detailed comparison of the expected …