English

Li-rich RGB stars in the Galactic Bulge

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-05-13 v1

Abstract

We present Lithium abundance determination for a sample of K giant stars in the galactic bulge. The stars presented here are the only 13 stars with detectable Lithium line (6767.18 A) among ~400 stars for which we have spectra in this wavelength range, half of them in Baade's Window (b=-4) and half in a field at b=-6. The stars were observed with the GIRAFFE spectrograph of FLAMES@VLT, with a spectral resolution of R~20,000. Abundances were derived via spectral synthesis and the results are compared with those for stars with similar parameters, but no detectable Li line. We find 13 stars with a detectable Li line, among which 2 have abundances A(Li)>2.7. No clear correlations were found between the Li abundance and those of other elements. With the exception of the two most Li rich stars, the others follow a fairly tight A(Li)-T_eff correlation. It would seems that there must be a Li production phase during the red giant branch (RGB), acting either on a very short timescale, or selectively only in some stars. The proposed Li production phase associated with the RGB bump cannot be excluded, although our targets are significantly brighter than the predicted RGB bump magnitude for a population at 8 kpc

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0907.4372,
  title  = {Li-rich RGB stars in the Galactic Bulge},
  author = {O. A. Gonzalez and M. Zoccali and L. Monaco and V. Hill and S. Cassisi and D. Minniti and A. Renzini and B. Barbuy and S. Ortolani and A. Gomez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.4372},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&A