English

Ages of Main-Sequence Turn-Off Stars from the GALAH Survey

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2022-04-27 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Main sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars are good tracers of Galactic populations since their ages can be reliably estimated from atmospheric parameters. Based on the GALAH survey, we use the Yale Rotation Evolution Code to determine ages of 2926 MSTO stars with mean age uncertainty \sim10\% considering the variation of C and O abundances. Ages of CO-poor stars are systematically affected by \sim10\% due to the C and O abundances, globally shifting to \sim0.5 Gyr older compared to the results using solar metal-mixture. Of the stars with \mbox{[Fe/H] \sim0.3-0.5} or \mbox{[O/Fe]~\leq~-0.25}, many have fractional age differences~\geq~20\%, and even reach up to 36\%. The age-metallicity relation appears to possibly exist two distinct sequences: a young sequence of stars with age mostly << 7 Gyr, and a relatively older sequence of stars with age mostly >> 7 Gyr, overlapping at 5 Gyr \leq~age~\leq 7 Gyr. Moreover, the trends of abundances to age ratios show two corresponding sequences, especially in [O/Fe]-age plane. We also find that [Y/Mg] is a good chemical clock in disk populations. The young sequence and the old sequence can not be separated based on chemistry or kinematics, therefore stellar age is an important parameter to distinguish these two sequences in our sample.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.06083,
  title  = {Ages of Main-Sequence Turn-Off Stars from the GALAH Survey},
  author = {Xunzhou Chen and Zhishuai Ge and Yuqin Chen and Shaolan Bi and Jie Yu and Wuming Yang and Jason W. Ferguson and Yaqian Wu and Yaguang Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.06083},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

15 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ