Revisiting the near infrared Calcium triplet as metallicity indicator
Abstract
The near-infrared Calcium II Triplet (CaT), around 850nm, is a key metallicity indicator for red giant stars. We present a revised [Fe/H] calibration as a function of CaT line strengths and four luminosity indicators, including the -band, together with the classical , , and bandpasses. For this purpose, we used a sample of 366 red giant stars belonging to 25 globular and open clusters, complemented by 52 extremely metal-poor field giant stars. The CaT line strengths are determined by fitting Gaussian-Lorentzian combination profiles using the Python lmfit package, which utilises the algorithms implemented therein. The derived calibration is valid for a wide metallicity range, \,dex, and for ages older than 200 Myr. In addition, we performed a detailed assessment of how factors such as spectral resolution, spectral quality (expressed through the signal-to-noise ratio), and the algorithms used to constrain the line profiles affect the measured line strengths and the resulting metallicities.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.20574,
title = {Revisiting the near infrared Calcium triplet as metallicity indicator},
author = {M. Navabi and R. Carrera and N. E. D. Noël and C. Gallart and E. Pancino and M. De Leo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.20574},
year = {2026}
}