Open Cluster Neutron Capture Element Abundances and the Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way Disk

Details Open Cluster Neutron Capture Element Abundances and the Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way Disk Open Cluster Neutron Capture Element Abundances and the Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way Disk

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21715239j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #152.39; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

1

Scientific paper

Open clusters are versatile probes of the chemical abundance distribution of the Milky Way disk. Recent years have seen a steady increase in the number of open clusters subject to high resolution spectroscopic study, including the development of large samples of (10-20) clusters analyzed homogeneously. While abundances of Fe-peak, light and alpha elements in open clusters have been studied in great detail, cluster neutron capture element abundance information is relatively sparse and largely inhomogeneous, save for the barium study of D'Orazi et al. (2009). Neutron capture elements are formed in Type II supernovae and in late stages of evolution in low mass stars, and therefore yield important clues to the chemical enrichment history of the galaxy. We have undertaken a study of Ba, La and Eu abundances in some two dozen open clusters based on KPNO 4m echelle spectra and archival high resolution spectra from Keck and VLT. Our sample has a comparable range in age to the D'Orazi et al. (2009) sample and covers Galactocentric distance Rgc 7 - 22 kpc. Analyses of the first 11 clusters, using a spectrum synthesis technique, confirm the surprising inverse correlation between the abundance of Ba and cluster age in giants first noted by D'Orazi et al. (2009), but full confirmation awaits a larger cluster sample. We also search for similar trends in La and Eu abundances. Here we present the preliminary results of this ongoing analysis. We also search for abundance trends with cluster location in the Galaxy and compare cluster abundance patterns to those of other disk populations, which will yield clues to the formation and evolution of the Milky Way disk. This research is supported by a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to HRJ under award AST-0901919.

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