No Arabic abstract
In this work we present and discuss the observations of the Mn abundances for 247 FGK dwarfs, located in the Galactic disc with metallicity -1<Fe/H]<+0.3. The observed stars belong to the substructures of the Galaxy thick and thin discs, and to the Hercules stream. The observations were conducted using the 1.93 m telescope at Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP, France) equipped with the echelle type spectrographs ELODIE and SOPHIE. The abundances were derived under the LTE approximation, with an average error for the [Mn/Fe] ratio of 0.10 dex. For most of the stars in the sample Mn abundances are not available in the literature. We obtain an evolution of [Mn/Fe] ratio with the metallicity [Fe/H] consistent with previous data compilations. In particular, within the metallicity range covered by our stellar sample the [Mn/Fe] ratio is increasing with the increase of metallicity. This due to the contribution to the Galactic chemical evolution of Mn and Fe from thermonuclear supernovae. We confirm the baseline scenario where most of the Mn in the Galactic disc and in the Sun is made by thermonuclear supernovae. In particular, the effective contribution from core-collapse supernovae to the Mn in the Solar system is about 10-20%. However, present uncertainties affecting the production of Mn and Fe in thermonuclear supernovae are limiting the constraining power of the observed [Mn/Fe] trend in the Galactic discs on, e.g., the frequency of different thermonuclear supernovae populations. The different production of these two elements in different types of thermonuclear supernovae needs to be disentangled by the dependence of their relative production on the metallicity of the supernova progenitor.
The Milky Ways metal-poor stars are nearby ancient objects that are used to study early chemical evolution and the assembly and structure of the Milky Way. Here we present reliable metallicities of $sim280,000$ stars with $-3.75 lesssim$ [Fe/H] $lesssim -0.75$ down to $g=17$ derived using metallicity-sensitive photometry from the second data release (DR2) of the SkyMapper Southern Survey. We use the dependency of the flux through the SkyMapper $v$ filter on the strength of the Ca II K absorption features, in tandem with SkyMapper $u,g,i$ photometry, to derive photometric metallicities for these stars. We find that metallicities derived in this way compare well to metallicities derived in large-scale spectroscopic surveys, and use such comparisons to calibrate and quantify systematics as a function of location, reddening, and color. We find good agreement with metallicities from the APOGEE, LAMOST, and GALAH surveys, based on a standard deviation of $sigmasim0.25$dex of the residuals of our photometric metallicities with respect to metallicities from those surveys. We also compare our derived photometric metallicities to metallicities presented in a number of high-resolution spectroscopic studies to validate the low metallicity end ([Fe/H] $< -2.5$) of our photometric metallicity determinations. In such comparisons, we find the metallicities of stars with photometric [Fe/H] $< -2.5$ in our catalog show no significant offset and a scatter of $sigmasim$0.31dex level relative to those in high-resolution work when considering the cooler stars ($g-i > 0.65$) in our sample. We also present an expanded catalog containing photometric metallicities of $sim720,000$ stars as a data table for further exploration of the metal-poor Milky Way.
Using data from the GALAH survey, we explore the dependence of elemental abundances on stellar age and metallicity among Galactic disc stars. We find that the abundance of most elements can be predicted from age and [Fe/H] with an intrinsic scatter of about 0.03 dex. We discuss the possible causes for the existence of the abundance-age-metallicity relations. Using a stochastic chemical enrichment scheme based on the size of Supernovae remnants, we show the intrinsic scatter is expected to be small, about 0.05 dex or even smaller if there is additional mixing in the ISM. Elemental abundances show trends with both age and metallicity and the relationship is well described by a simple model in which the dependence of abundance ([X/Fe]) on age and [Fe/H] are additively separable. Elements can be grouped based on the direction of their abundance gradient in the (age,[Fe/H]) plane and different groups can be roughly associated with three distinct nucleosynthetic production sites, the exploding massive stars, the exploding white dwarfs and the AGB stars. However, the abundances of some elements, like Co, La, and Li, show large scatter for a given age and metallicity, suggesting processes other than simple Galactic chemical evolution are at play. We also compare the abundance trends of main-sequence turn-off stars against that of giants, whose ages were estimated using asteroseismic information from the K2 mission. For most elements, the trends of main-sequence turn-off stars are similar to that of giants. The existence of abundance relations implies that we can estimate the age and birth radius of disc stars, which is important for studying the dynamic and chemical evolution of the Galaxy.
The spatial distribution of elemental abundances in the disc of our Galaxy gives insights both on its assembly process and subsequent evolution, and on the stellar nucleogenesis of the different elements. Gradients can be traced using several types of objects as, for instance, (young and old) stars, open clusters, HII regions, planetary nebulae. We aim at tracing the radial distributions of abundances of elements produced through different nucleosynthetic channels -the alpha-elements O, Mg, Si, Ca and Ti, and the iron-peak elements Fe, Cr, Ni and Sc - by using the Gaia-ESO idr4 results of open clusters and young field stars. From the UVES spectra of member stars, we determine the average composition of clusters with ages >0.1 Gyr. We derive statistical ages and distances of field stars. We trace the abundance gradients using the cluster and field populations and we compare them with a chemo-dynamical Galactic evolutionary model. Results. The adopted chemo-dynamical model, with the new generation of metallicity-dependent stellar yields for massive stars, is able to reproduce the observed spatial distributions of abundance ratios, in particular the abundance ratios of [O/Fe] and [Mg/Fe] in the inner disc (5 kpc<RGC <7 kpc), with their differences, that were usually poorly explained by chemical evolution models. Often, oxygen and magnesium are considered as equivalent in tracing alpha-element abundances and in deducing, e.g., the formation time-scales of different Galactic stellar populations. In addition, often [alpha/Fe] is computed combining several alpha-elements. Our results indicate, as expected, a complex and diverse nucleosynthesis of the various alpha-elements, in particular in the high metallicity regimes, pointing towards a different origin of these elements and highlighting the risk of considering them as a single class with common features.
The abundance of {alpha}-elements provides an important fossil signature in Galactic archaeology to trace the chemical evolution of the different disc populations. High-precision chemical abundances are crucial to improving our understanding of the chemodynamical properties present in the Galaxy. However, deriving precise abundance estimations in the metal-rich disc ([M/H] > 0 dex) is still challenging. The aim of this paper is to analyse different error sources affecting magnesium abundance estimations from optical spectra of metal-rich stars. We derived Mg abundances for 87522 high-resolution spectra of 2210 solar neighbourhood stars from the AMBRE Project. For this purpose, the GAUGUIN automated abundance estimation procedure was employed. The normalisation procedure has a strong impact on the derived abundances, with a clear dependence on the stellar type and the line intensity. For non-saturated lines, the optimal wavelength domain for the local continuum placement should be evaluated using a goodness-of-fit criterion, allowing mask-size dependence with the spectral type. Moreover, for strong saturated lines, applying a narrow normalisation window reduces the parameter-dependent biases of the abundance estimate, increasing the line-to-line abundance precision. In addition, working at large spectral resolutions always leads to better results than at lower ones. The resulting improvement in the abundance precision makes it possible to observe both a clear thin-thick disc chemical distinction and a decreasing trend in the magnesium abundance even at supersolar metallicities. In the era of precise kinematical and dynamical data, optimising the normalisation procedures implemented for large spectroscopic stellar surveys would provide a significant improvement to our understanding of the chemodynamical patterns of Galactic populations.
We measure nebular oxygen abundances for 204 emission-line galaxies with redshifts 0.3<z<1.0 in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey North (GOODS-N) field using spectra from the Team Keck Redshift Survey (TKRS). We also provide an updated analytic prescription for estimating oxygen abundances using the traditional strong emission line ratio, R_{23}, based on the photoionization models of Kewley & Dopita (2003). We include an analytic formula for very crude metallicity estimates using the [NII]6584/Halpha ratio. Oxygen abundances for GOODS-N galaxies range from 8.2< 12+log(O/H)< 9.1 corresponding to metallicities between 0.3 and 2.5 times the solar value. This sample of galaxies exhibits a correlation between rest-frame blue luminosity and gas-phase metallicity (i.e., an L-Z relation), consistent with L-Z correlations of previously-studied intermediate-redshift samples. The zero point of the L-Z relation evolves with redshift in the sense that galaxies of a given luminosity become more metal poor at higher redshift. Galaxies in luminosity bins -18.5<M_B<-21.5 exhibit a decrease in average oxygen abundance by 0.14pm0.05 dex from z=0 to z=1. This rate of metal enrichment means that 28pm0.07% of metals in local galaxies have been synthesized since z=1, in reasonable agreement with the predictions based on published star formation rate densities which show that ~38% of stars in the universe have formed during the same interval. (Abridged)