It is becoming clear that determination of the abundance of Si using lines of Si II and Si III can lead to quite discordant results in mid to late B-type stars. The difference between the Si abundances derived from the two ion states can exceed one d
ex in some cases. We have carried out a study intended to clarify which kinds of B stars exhibit this discrepancy, to try to identify regularities in the phenomenon, and to explore possible explanations such as abundance stratification by comparing models to observed spectra. We used spectra from the ESPaDOnS spectropolarimeter and FEROS spectrograph, supplemented with spectra from the ESO and ELODIE archives, of magnetic Bp, HgMn, and normal B-type stars ranging in effective temperature from about 10500 to 15000 K. Using these spectra, we derived abundances using the spectrum synthesis program ZEEMAN which can take into account the influence of magnetic fields. For each star, accurate abundances of Si II, Si III, Ti, Cr, and Fe were derived. All magnetic Bp stars in our sample show a discordance between the derived abundances of the first and second ions of silicon, with the latter being between 0.6 - 1.7 dex higher. The same behaviour is observed in the non-magnetic stars but to a much smaller extent: Si III is enhanced by between 0.3 - 0.8 dex compared to Si II.We do not detect the discrepancy in three stars, HD 22136 (normal), HD 57608 (HgMn) and HD 27295 (HgMn); these are the only stars in our sample for which the microturbulence parameter is significantly different from zero, and which therefore probably have convection occurring in their atmospheres. We find that vertical stratification of silicon in the atmospheres of B-type stars may provide an explanation of this phenomenon, but our detailed stratification models do not completely explain the discrepancies, which may, in part, be due to non-LTE effects.
Detection of magnetic fields has been reported in several sdO and sdB stars. Recent literature has cast doubts on the reliability of most of these detections. We revisit data previously published in the literature, and we present new observations to
clarify the question of how common magnetic fields are in subdwarf stars. We consider a sample of about 40 hot subdwarf stars. About 30 of them have been observed with the FORS1 and FORS2 instruments of the ESO VLT. Here we present new FORS1 field measurements for 17 stars, 14 of which have never been observed for magnetic fields before. We also critically review the measurements already published in the literature, and in particular we try to explain why previous papers based on the same FORS1 data have reported contradictory results. All new and re-reduced measurements obtained with FORS1 are shown to be consistent with non-detection of magnetic fields. We explain previous spurious field detections from data obtained with FORS1 as due to a non-optimal method of wavelength calibration. Field detections in other surveys are found to be uncertain or doubtful, and certainly in need of confirmation. There is presently no strong evidence for the occurrence of a magnetic field in any sdB or sdO star, with typical longitudinal field uncertainties of the order of 2-400 G. It appears that globally simple fields of more than about 1 or 2 kG in strength occur in at most a few percent of hot subdwarfs, and may be completely absent at this strength. Further high-precision surveys, both with high-resolution spectropolarimeters and with instruments similar to FORS1 on large telescopes, would be very valuable.
