No Arabic abstract
We present chemical abundances for the elements carbon, sodium, and fluorine in 15 red giants of the globular cluster M 4, as well as six red giants of the globular cluster $omega$ Centauri. The chemical abundances were calculated in LTE via spectral synthesis. The spectra analyzed are high-resolution spectra obtained in the near-infrared region around $lambda$2.3$mu$m with the Phoenix spectrograph on the 8.1m Gemini South Telescope, the IGRINS spectrograph on the McDonald Observatory 2.7m Telescope, and the CRIRES spectrograph on the ESO 8.2m Very Large Telescope. The results indicate a significant reduction in the fluorine abundances when compared to previous values from the literature for M 4 and $omega$ Centauri, due to a downward revision in the excitation potentials of the HF(1-0) R9 line used in the analysis. The fluorine abundances obtained for the M 4 red giants are found to be anti-correlated with those of Na, following the typical pattern of abundance variations seen in globular clusters between distinct stellar populations. In M 4, as the Na abundance increases by $sim$+0.4 dex, the F abundance decreases by $sim$-0.2 dex. A comparison with abundance predictions from two sets of stellar evolution models finds that the models predict somewhat less F depletion ($sim$-0.1 dex) for the same increase of +0.4 dex in Na.
The chemical evolution of fluorine is investigated in a sample of Milky Way red giantstars that span a significant range in metallicity from [Fe/H] $sim$ -1.3 to 0.0 dex. Fluorine abundances are derived from vibration-rotation lines of HF in high-resolution infraredspectra near $lambda$ 2.335 $mu$m. The red giants are members of the thin and thick disk / halo,with two stars being likely members of the outer disk Monoceros overdensity. At lowermetallicities, with [Fe/H]<-0.4 to -0.5, the abundance of F varies as a primary element with respect to the Fe abundance, with a constant subsolar value of [F/Fe] $sim$ -0.3 to -0.4 dex. At larger metallicities, however, [F/Fe] increases rapidly with [Fe/H] anddisplays a near-secondary behavior with respect to Fe. Comparisons with various models of chemical evolution suggest that in the low-metallicity regime (dominated hereby thick disk stars), a primary evolution of $^{19}$F with Fe, with a subsolar [F/Fe] valuethat roughly matches the observed plateau can be reproduced by a model incorporatingneutrino nucleosynthesis in the aftermath of the core collapse in supernovae of type II (SN II). A primary behavior for [F/Fe] at low metallicity is also observed for a model including rapid rotating low-metallicity massive stars but this overproduces [F/Fe] atlow metallicity. The thick disk red giants in our sample span a large range of galactocentric distance (Rg $sim$ 6--13.7 kpc), yet display a $sim$constant value of [F/Fe], indicating a very flat gradient (with a slope of 0.02 $pm$ 0.03 dex/kpc) of this elemental ratio over asignificant portion of the Galaxy having|Z|>300 pc away from the Galaxy mid-plane.
Nearly all Galactic globular clusters host stars that display characteristic abundance anti-correlations, like the O-rich/Na-poor pattern typical of field halo stars, together with O-poor/Na-rich additional components. A recent spectroscopic investigation questioned the presence of O-poor/Na-rich stars amongst a sample of asymptotic giant branch stars in the cluster M 4, at variance with the spectroscopic detection of a O-poor/Na-rich component along both the cluster red giant branch and horizontal branch. This is contrary to what is expected from the cluster horizontal branch morphology and horizontal branch stellar evolution models. Here we have investigated this issue by employing the CUBI= (U-B)-(B-I) index, that previous studies have demonstrated to be very effective in separating multiple populations along both the red giant and asymptotic giant branch sequences. We confirm previous results that the RGB is intrinsically broad in the V-CUBI diagram, with the presence of two components which nicely correspond to the two populations identified by high-resolution spectroscopy. We find that AGB stars are distributed over a wide range of CUBI values, in close analogy with what is observed for the RGB, demonstrating that the AGB of M4 also hosts multiple stellar populations.
NGC 4833 is a metal-poor Galactic globular cluster (GC) whose multiple stellar populations present an extreme chemical composition. The Na-O anti-correlation is quite extended, which is in agreement with the long tail on the blue horizontal branch, and the large star-to-star variations in the [Mg/Fe] ratio span more than 0.5 dex. Recently, significant excesses of Ca and Sc with respect to field stars of a similar metallicity were also found, signaling the production of species forged in H-burning at a very high temperature in the polluters of the first generation in this cluster. Since an enhancement of potassium is also expected under these conditions, we tested this scenario by analysing intermediate resolution spectra of 59 cluster stars including the K I resonance line at 7698.98 A. We found a wide spread of K abundances, anti-correlated to Mg and O abundances, as previously also observed in NGC 2808. The abundances of K are found to be correlated to those of Na, Ca, and Sc. Overall, this chemical pattern confirms that NGC 4833 is one of the relatively few GCs where the self-enrichment from first generation polluters occurred at such high temperatures that proton-capture reactions were able to proceed up to heavier species such as K and possibly Ca. The spread in K observed in GCs appears to be a function of a linear combination of cluster total luminosity and metallicity, as other chemical signatures of multiple stellar populations in GCs.
We observed a sample of 90 red giant branch (RGB) stars in NGC 2808 using FLAMES/GIRAFFE and the high resolution grating with the set up HR21. These stars have previous accurate atmospheric parameters and abundances of light elements. We derived aluminium abundances for them from the strong doublet Al I 8772-8773 Angstrom as in previous works of our group. In addition, we were able to estimate the relative CN abundances for 89 of the stars from the strength of a large number of CN features. When adding self consistent abundances from previous UVES spectra analysed by our team, we gathered [Al/Fe] ratios for a total of 108 RGB stars in NGC 2808. The full dataset of proton-capture elements is used to explore in details the five spectroscopically detected discrete components in this globular cluster. We found that different classes of polluters are required to reproduce the (anti)-correlations among all proton-capture elements in the populations P2, I1, and I2 with intermediate composition. This is in agreement with the detection of lithium in lower RGB second generation stars, requiring at least two kind of polluters. To have chemically homogeneous populations the best subdivision of our sample is into six components, as derived from statistical cluster analysis. By comparing different diagrams [element/Fe] vs [element/Fe] we show for the first time that a simple dilution model is not able to reproduce all the sub-populations in this cluster. Polluters of different masses are required. NGC 2808 is confirmed to be a tough challenge to any scenario for globular cluster formation.
Lithium is created during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis and it is destroyed in stellar interiors at relatively low temperatures. However, it should be preserved in the stellar envelopes of unevolved stars and progressively diluted during mixing processes. In particular, after the first dredge-up along the RGB, lithium should be completely destroyed, but this is not what we observe today in globular clusters. This element allows to test stellar evolutionary models, as well as different types of polluters for second population stars in the multiple population scenarios. Due to the difficulty in the measurement of the small available lithium line, few GCs have been studied in details so far. Literature results are not homogeneous for what concerns type of stars, sample sizes, and chemical analysis methods. The Gaia-ESO survey allows us to study the largest sample of GCs stars (about 2000, both dwarfs and giants) for which the lithium has been analysed homogeneously.