Insights into the formation of barium and Tc-poor S stars from an extended sample of orbital elements

The set of orbital elements available for chemically-peculiar red giant (PRG) stars has been considerably enlarged thanks to a decade-long CORAVEL radial-velocity monitoring of about 70 barium stars and 50 S stars. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the complete set of orbital parameters available for PRG stars; the individual data are given in three companion papers. The main results are as follows: (i) The similarity between the orbital parameters of Tc-poor S stars and barium stars confirms that Tc-poor S stars are the cooler analogs of barium stars; (ii) The eccentricity -- period diagram of PRG stars clearly bears the signature of dissipative processes associated with mass transfer; (iii) The mass function distribution is compatible with the unseen companion being a white dwarf (WD); (iv) Assuming that the WD companion has a mass in the range 0.60+-0.04 Msun, the masses of mild and strong barium stars amount to 1.9+-0.2 and 1.5+-0.2 Msun, respectively; (v) Mild barium stars are not restricted to long-period systems; the difference between mild and strong barium stars is mainly one of galactic population rather than of orbital separation, in agreement with their respective kinematical properties; (vi) Binarity is probably not a sufficient condition to produce a PRG star, and a metallicity lower than solar seems to be required as well.