Elemental abundance trends in the Galactic thin and thick disks as traced by nearby F and G dwarf stars

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

245

Stars: Fundamental Parameters, Stars: Abundances, Galaxy: Disk, Galaxy: Formation, Galaxy: Abundances, Galaxy: Kinematics And Dynamics

Scientific paper

Based on spectra from F and G dwarf stars, we present elemental abundance trends in the Galactic thin and thick disks in the metallicity regime -0.8<˜ [Fe/H] <˜ +0.4. Our findings can be summarized as follows. 1) Both the thin and the thick disks show smooth and distinct abundance trends that, at sub-solar metallicities, are clearly separated. 2) For the alpha -elements the thick disk shows signatures of chemical enrichment from SNe type Ia. 3) The age of the thick disk sample is in the mean older than the thin disk sample. 4) Kinematically, there exist thick disk stars with super-solar metallicities. Based on these findings, together with other constraints from the literature, we discuss different formation scenarios for the thick disk. We suggest that the currently most likely formation scenario is a violent merger event or a close encounter with a companion galaxy. Based on kinematics the stellar sample was selected to contain stars with high probabilities of belonging either to the thin or to the thick Galactic disk. The total number of stars are 66 of which 21 belong to the thick disk and 45 to the thin disk. The analysis is based on high-resolution spectra with high signal-to-noise (R ~ 48 000 and S/N gtrsim 150, respectively) recorded with the FEROS spectrograph on La Silla, Chile. Abundances have been determined for four alpha -elements (Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti), for four even-nuclei iron peak elements (Cr, Fe, Ni, and Zn), and for the light elements Na and Al, from equivalent width measurements of ~ 30 000 spectral lines. An extensive investigation of the atomic parameters, log gf-values in particular, have been performed in order to achieve abundances that are trustworthy. Noteworthy is that we find for Ti good agreement between the abundances from Ti I and Ti Ii. Our solar Ti abundances are in concordance with the standard meteoritic Ti abundance
Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile, Proposals #65.L-0019(B) and 67.B-0108(B).
Full Tables \ref{tab:linelist} and \ref{tab:abundances} are only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/410/527

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Elemental abundance trends in the Galactic thin and thick disks as traced by nearby F and G dwarf stars does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Elemental abundance trends in the Galactic thin and thick disks as traced by nearby F and G dwarf stars, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Elemental abundance trends in the Galactic thin and thick disks as traced by nearby F and G dwarf stars will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1086138

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.