Charting circumstellar chemistry of carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch stars

Context. The circumstellar envelopes (CSEs) of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars harbour a rich variety of molecules and are sites of complex chemistry. Our current understanding of the circumstellar chemical processes of carbon-rich AGB stars is predominantly based on observations of a single star, IRC +10 216, often regarded as an archetypical carbon star. Aims. We aim to estimate stellar and circumstellar properties for five carbon stars, and constrain their circumstellar CS abundances. This study compares the CS abundances among the sources, informs circumstellar chemical models, and helps to assess if IRC+10 216 is a good representative of the physics and chemistry of carbon star CSEs. Methods. We modelled the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and CO line emission to derive the stellar and outflow properties. Using these, we then retrieved CS abundance profiles with detailed radiative transfer modelling, imposing spatial and excitation constraints from ALMA and single-dish observations. Results. We obtain good fits to the SEDs and CO lines for all sources and reproduce the CS line emission across various transitions and apertures, yielding robust estimates of the CS abundance profiles. Peak CS fractional abundances range from 1×10−6−4×10−6, with e-folding radii of 1.8×1016−6.8×1016 cm. We also derive reliable 12C/13C and 32S/34S ratios from CS isotopologue modelling. Conclusions. Our results refine previous single-dish CS abundance estimates and improve the relative uncertainty on the CS e-folding radius for IRAS 07454-7112 by a factor of ~2.5. Chemical models reproduce our estimates of the CS radial extent, corroborating the CS photodissociation framework used therein. We find no significant differences between the derived CS abundance profiles for IRC +10 216 and the rest of the sample, apart from the expected density-driven variations.