Probing O-enrichment in C-rich dust planetary nebulae
  The abundance of O in planetary nebulae (PNe) has been historically used as a
metallicity indicator of the interstellar medium (ISM) where they originated;
e.g., it has been widely used to study metallicity gradients in our Galaxy and
beyond. However, clear observational evidence for O self enrichment in
low-metallicity Galactic PNe with C-rich dust has been recently reported. Here
we report asymptotic giant branch (AGB) nucleosynthesis predictions for the
abundances of the CNO elements and helium in the metallicity range Zsun/4 < Z <
2Zsun. Our AGB models, with diffusive overshooting from all the convective
borders, predict that O is overproduced in low-Z low-mass (~1-3 Msun) AGB stars
and nicely reproduce the recent O overabundances observed in C-rich dust PNe.
This confirms that O is not always a good proxy of the original ISM metallicity
and another chemical elements such as Cl or Ar should be used instead. The
production of oxygen by low-mass stars should be thus considered in
galactic-evolution models.
