No Arabic abstract
Nitrogen abundances and carbon isotope ratios (12C/13C) in the atmospheres of red giants are known to be influenced by dredge-up of H-burning products and serve as useful probes to study the nature of evolution-induced envelope mixing. We determined the [N/Fe] and 12C/13C ratios for 239 late-G/early-K giant stars by applying the spectrum-fitting technique to the 12CN and 13CN lines in the ~8002-8005A region, with an aim to investigate how these quantities are related to other similar mixing-affected indicators which were already reported in our previous work. It was confirmed that [N/Fe] values are generally supersolar (typically by several tenths dex though widely differ from star to star), anti-correlated with [C/Fe], and correlated with [Na/Fe], as expected from theory. As seen from their dependence upon stellar parameters, it appears that mixing tends to be enhanced with an increase of stellar luminosity (or mass) and rotational velocity, which is also reasonable from the theoretical viewpoint. In contrast, the resulting 12C/13C ratios turned out to be considerably diversified in the range of ~5-50 (with a peak around ~20), without showing any systematic dependence upon C or N abundance anomalies caused by the mixing of CN-cycled material. It thus appears that our understanding on the photospheric 12C/13C ratios in red giants is still incomplete, for which more observational studies would be required.
We show that the masses of red giant stars can be well predicted from their photospheric carbon and nitrogen abundances, in conjunction with their spectroscopic stellar labels log g, Teff, and [Fe/H]. This is qualitatively expected from mass-dependent post main sequence evolution. We here establish an empirical relation between these quantities by drawing on 1,475 red giants with asteroseismic mass estimates from Kepler that also have spectroscopic labels from APOGEE DR12. We assess the accuracy of our model, and find that it predicts stellar masses with fractional r.m.s. errors of about 14% (typically 0.2 Msun). From these masses, we derive ages with r.m.s errors of 40%. This empirical model allows us for the first time to make age determinations (in the range 1-13 Gyr) for vast numbers of giant stars across the Galaxy. We apply our model to 52,000 stars in APOGEE DR12, for which no direct mass and age information was previously available. We find that these estimates highlight the vertical age structure of the Milky Way disk, and that the relation of age with [alpha/M] and metallicity is broadly consistent with established expectations based on detailed studies of the solar neighbourhood.
The behaviour of the Delta nu =2 CO bands around 2.3 micron was examined by comparing observed and synthetic spectra in stars in globular clusters of different metallicity. Changes in the 12C/13C isotopic ratio and the carbon abundances were investigated in stars from 3500--4900 K in the galactic globular clusters M71, M5, M3 and M13, covering the metallicity range from --0.7 to --1.6. We found relatively low carbon abundances that are not affected by the value of oxygen abundance. For most giants the 12C/13C ratios determined are consistent with the equilibrium value for the CN cycle. This suggests complete mixing on the ascent of the red giant branch, in contrast to the substantially higher values predicted across this range of parameters by the current generation of models. We found some evidence for a larger dispersion of CDC in giants of M71 of metallicity [mu] = [M/H] = -0.7 in comparison with the giants of M3, M5 and M13, which are more metal deficient. Finally, we show evidence for lower 12C/13C in giants of globular clusters with lower metallicities, as predicted by theory.
The isotope abundances provide powerful diagnostics of the chemical enrichment in our Galaxy. The star HD 140283 is one of the best-studied very metal-poor dwarf stars. It is very old, and the chemical abundance in this star is a good witness of the chemical composition of the matter in the early Galaxy. The aim of this work is to measure the precise abundances of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and mainly the 12C/13C isotopic ratio in this very old metal-poor star in order to have a good reference for the computations of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. We used very high spectral resolution data, with extremely high signal-to-noise ratios obtained with the spectrographs ESPaDOnS at the CFHT, ESPRESSO at the VLT, and HARPS at the ESO 3.6m telescope. For the first time, we were able to measure the 12C/13C ratio in a very old metal-poor dwarf that was born at the very beginning of the Galaxy: 27 < 12C/13C < 45. We also obtained a precise determination of the abundance of the CNO elements in this star. These abundances suggest that the effect of super-asymptotic giant branch stars or fast-rotating massive stars was significant in the early Galaxy.
Using the Green Bank 100 m telescope and the Nobeyama 45 m telescope, we have observed the rotational emission lines of the three 13C isotopic species of HC3N in the 3 and 7 mm bands toward the low-mass star-forming region L1527 in order to explore their anomalous 12C/13C ratios. The column densities of the 13C isotopic species are derived from the intensities of the J = 5-4 lines observed at high signal-to-noise ratios. The abundance ratios are determined to be 1.00:1.01 +- 0.02:1.35 +- 0.03:86.4 +- 1.6 for [H13CCCN]:[HC13CCN]:[HCC13CN]:[HCCCN], where the errors represent one standard deviation. The ratios are very similar to those reported for the starless cloud, Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 Cyanopolyyne Peak (TMC-1 CP). These ratios cannot be explained by thermal equilibrium, but likely reflect the production pathways of this molecule. We have shown the equality of the abundances of H13CCCN and HC13CCN at a high-confidence level, which supports the production pathways of HC3N via C2H2 and C2H2+. The average 12C/13C ratio for HC3N is 77 +- 4, which may be only slightly higher than the elemental 12C/13C ratio. Dilution of the 13C isotope in HC3N is not as significant as that in CCH or c-C3H2. We have also simultaneously observed the DCCCN and HCCC15N lines and derived the isotope ratios: [DCCCN]/[HCCCN] = 0.0370 +- 0.0007 and [HCCCN]/[HCCC15N] = 338 +- 12.
The successful launches of the CoRoT and Kepler space missions have led to the detections of solar-like oscillations in large samples of red-giant stars. The large numbers of red giants with observed oscillations make it possible to investigate the properties of the sample as a whole: ensemble asteroseismology. In this article we summarise ensemble asteroseismology results obtained from data released by the Kepler Science Team (~150,000 field stars) as presented by Hekker et al. (2011b) and for the clusters NGC 6791, NGC 6811 and NGC 6819 (Hekker et al. 2011a) and we discuss the importance of such studies.