English

Fluorine Abundances of Galactic Low-Metallicity Giants

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2013-02-19 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

With abundances and 2{\sigma} upper limits of fluorine (F) in seven metal-poor field giants, nucleosynthesis of stellar F at low metallicity is discussed. The measurements are derived from the HF(1-0) R9 line at 23358{\AA} using nearinfrared K-band high-resolution spectra obtained with CRIRES at the Very Large Telescope. The sample reaches lower metallicities than previous studies on F of field giants, ranging from [Fe/H] = -1.56 down to -2.13. Effects of three-dimensional model atmospheres on the derived F and O abundances are quantitatively estimated and shown to be insignificant for the program stars. The observed F yield in the form of [F/O] is compared with two sets of Galactic chemical evolution models, which quantitatively demonstrate the contribution of Type II supernova (SN II) {\nu}-process and asymptotic giant branch/Wolf-Rayet stars. It is found that at this low-metallicity region, models cannot well predict the observed distribution of [F/O], while the observations are better fit by models considering an SN II {\nu}-process with a neutrino energy of E_{\nu} = 3 x 10^53 erg. Our sample contains HD 110281, a retrograde orbiting low-{\alpha} halo star, showing a similar F evolution as globular clusters. This supports the theory that such halo stars are possibly accreted from dwarf galaxy progenitors of globular clusters in the halo.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1302.3928,
  title  = {Fluorine Abundances of Galactic Low-Metallicity Giants},
  author = {H. N. Li and H. -G. Ludwig and E. Caffau and N. Christlieb and G. Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.3928},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, published in The Astrophysical Journal