118555570
The Metallicity Gradient of the Thick Disk Based on Red Horizontal-branch Stars from SDSS DR8
Based on SDSS DR8, we have selected a sample of 1728 red horizontal-branch (RHB) stars with |Z| < 3 kpc by using a color-metallicity relation and stellar parameters. The sample stars clearly trace a typical thick disk population with peaks at |Z| = 1.26 kpc and [Fe/H] = –0.54. The vertical metallicity gradient of the thick disk is estimated in two ways. One is a fit to the Gaussian peaks of the metallicity histograms of the thick disk by subtracting minor contributions from the thin disk and the inner halo based on the Besancon Galaxy Model. The resulting gradient is –0.12 ± 0.01 dex kpc–1 for 0.5 < |Z| < 3 kpc. The other method is to linearly fit the data based on stars with 1 < |Z| < 3 kpc being the main component of the thick disk. Five subgroups are then selected in different directions in the X-|Z| plane to investigate the difference in the vertical metallicity gradient between the Galactocenter and anti-Galactocenter directions. We found that a vertical gradient of –0.22 ± 0.07 dex kpc–1 is detected for five directions except for one involving the pollution of stars from the bulge. The results indicate that the vertical gradient is dominant, but a radial gradient has a minor contribution for the thick disk population represented by RHB stars with 1 < |Z| < 3 kpc. The present work strongly suggests the existence of a metallicity gradient in the thick disk, which is thought to be negligible in most previous works in the literature.
15542603
Sulphur abundances in disk stars: A correlation with silicon
We have performed new determinations of sulphur and silicon abundances for a sample of 26 disk stars based on high-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra. The results indicate a solar (S/Fe) for (Fe/H) > 0:3, below which (S/Fe) increases to0.25 dex at (Fe/H) = 1:0. We find that there is a good correlation between (S/H) and (Si/H), indicating the same nucleosynthetic origin of the two elements. It seems that the ratio of sulphur to silicon does not depend on metallicity for (Fe/H)> 1:0. The implications of these results on models for the nucleosynthesis of-capture elements and the chemical evolution of the Galaxy are discussed.
15339664
Lithium abundances for 185 main-sequence stars - Galactic evolution and stellar depletion of lithium
We present a survey of lithium abundances in 185 main-sequence field stars with $5600 \la T_{\rm eff} \la 6600$ K and $-1.4 \la {\rm [Fe/H]} \la +0.2$ based on new measurements of the equivalent width of the $\lambda 6708$ Lii line in high-resolution spectra of 130 stars and a reanalysis of data for 55 stars from Lambert et al. ([CITE]). The survey takes advantage of improved photometric and spectroscopic determinations of effective temperature and metallicity as well as mass and age derived from Hipparcos absolute magnitudes, offering an opportunity to investigate the behaviour of Li as a function of these parameters. An interesting result from this study is the presence of a large gap in the $\log \varepsilon ({\rm Li}) - T_{\rm eff}$ plane, which distinguishes "Li-dip"stars like those first identified in the Hyades cluster by Boesgaard & Tripicco ([CITE]) from other stars with a much higher Li abundance. The Li-dip stars concentrate on a certain mass, which decreases with metallicity from about 1.4 $M_{\odot}$ at solar metallicity to 1.1 $M_{\odot}$ at ${\rm [Fe/H]} \simeq -1.0$. Excluding the Li-dip stars and a small group of lower mass stars with $T_{\rm eff} < 5900$ K and $\log \varepsilon ({\rm Li}) < 1.5$, the remaining stars, when divided into four metallicity groups, may show a correlation between Li abundance and stellar mass. The dispersion around the $\log \varepsilon ({\rm Li})$-mass relation is about 0.2 dex below ${\rm [Fe/H]} \simeq -0.4$ and 0.3 dex above this metallicity, which cannot be explained by observational errors or differences in metallicity. Furthermore, there is no correlation between the residuals of the $\log \varepsilon ({\rm Li})$-mass relations and stellar age, which ranges from 1.5 Gyr to about 15 Gyr. This suggests that Li depletion occurs early in stellar life and that parameters other than stellar mass and metallicity affect the degree of depletion, e.g. initial rotation velocity and/or the rate of angular momentum loss. It cannot be excluded, however, that a cosmic scatter of the Li abundance in the Galaxy at a given metallicity contributes to the dispersion in Li abundance. These problems make it difficult to determine the Galactic evolution of Li from the data, but a comparison of the upper envelope of the distribution of stars in the $\log \varepsilon ({\rm Li}) - {\rm [Fe/H]}$ plane with recent Galactic evolutionary models by Romano et al. ([CITE]) suggests that novae are a major source for the Li production in the Galactic disk; their occurrence seems to be the explanation for the steep increase of Li abundance at ${\rm [Fe/H]} \simeq -0.4$.
119296598
THE CH(G) INDEX AS A NEW CRITERION FOR SELECTING RED GIANT STARS
We have measured the CH G band (CH(G)) index for evolved stars in the globular cluster M3 based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic survey. It is found that there is a useful way to select red giant branch (RGB) stars from the contamination of other evolved stars such as asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red horizontal branch (RHB) stars by using the CH(G) index versus (g – r)0 diagram if the metallicity is known from the spectra. When this diagram is applied to field giant stars with similar metallicity, we establish a calibration of CH(G) = 1.625(g – r)0 – 1.174(g – r)2 0 – 0.934. This method is confirmed by stars with [Fe/H] ~ –2.3 where spectra of member stars in globular clusters M15 and M92 are available in the SDSS database. We thus extend this kind of calibration to every individual metallicity bin ranging from [Fe/H] ~ –3.0 to [Fe/H] ~ 0.0 by using field red giant stars with 0.4 ≤ (g – r)0 ≤ 1.0. The metallicity-dependent calibrations give CH(G) = 1.625(g – r)0 – 1.174(g – r)2 0 + 0.060[Fe/H] – 0.830 for –3.0 < [Fe/H] ≤ –1.2 and CH(G) = 0.953(g – r)0 – 0.655(g – r)2 0 + 0.060[Fe/H] – 0.650 for –1.2 < [Fe/H] < 0.0. The calibrations are valid for the SDSS spectroscopic data set, and they cannot be applied blindly to other data sets. With the two calibrations, a significant number of the contaminating stars (AGB and RHB stars) were excluded and thus a clear sample of red giant stars is obtained by selecting stars within ±0.05 mag of the calibration. The sample is published online and it is expected that this large and clean sample of RGB stars will provide new information on the formation and evolution of the Galaxy.
118624022
Metallicity and Kinematic Distributions of Red Horizontal-branch Stars from the SDSS Survey
On the basis of a recently derived color-metallicity relation and stellar parameters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 spectroscopic survey, a large sample of red horizontal-branch (RHB) candidates have been selected to serve as standard candles. The metallicity and kinematic distributions of these stars indicate that they mainly originate from the thick-disk and the halo populations. The typical thick disk is characterized by the first group peaking at [Fe/H] ~ –0.6, V rot ~ 170 km s–1 with a vertical scale height around |Z| ~ 1.2 kpc, while stars with [Fe/H] 0 km s–1 (Halo I) shows a sign of metallicity gradient in the [Fe/H] versus |Z| diagram, while the other with V rot 10 kpc based on the star distribution in the R versus |Z| diagram.
14138593
Sc and Mn abundances in disk and metal-rich halo stars
Sc and Mn abundances are determined for 119 F and G main-sequence stars with 1:4 < (Fe/H) < +0:1, represent- ing stars from the thin disk, the thick disk and the halo. The results indicate that Sc behaves like an element, showing a decreasing (Sc/Fe) with increasing metallicity in disk stars and a dual pattern in the kinematically selected halo stars. In contrast, Mn shows an increase from (Mn/Fe) ' 0:5 at (Fe/H) = 1:4 to zero at solar metallicity. There appears to be a discontinuity or sharp increase of (Mn/Fe) at (Fe/H) ' 0:7 corresponding to the transition between the thick and the thin disk. It is dis- cussed if supernovae of Type Ia are a major source of Mn in the Galactic disk or if the trend of (Mn/Fe) vs. (Fe/H) can be ex- plained by nucleosynthesis in Type II supernovae with a strong metallicity dependence of the yield.
119301374
Balanced electric-magnetic dihole in Kaluza-Klein theory
A bstractWe present a four-dimensional double-black-hole (or dihole) solution in KaluzaKlein theory, describing a superposition of an electrically charged and a magnetically charged black hole. This system can be balanced for appropriately chosen parameters, and the resulting space-time is completely regular on and outside the event horizons. This solution was constructed using the inverse-scattering method in five-dimensional vacuum gravity, in which it describes a rotating black ring surrounding a static black hole on a Taub-NUT background space. Various properties of this solution are studied, from both a four- and five-dimensional perspective.
119247241
New form of the C metric with cosmological constant
The new form of the C-metric proposed by Hong and Teo, in which the two structure functions are factorised, has proved useful in its analysis. In this paper, we extend this form to the case when a cosmological constant is present. The new form of this solution has two structure functions which are partially factorised; moreover, the roots of the structure functions are now regarded as fundamental parameters. This leads to a natural representation of the solution in terms of its so-called domain structure, in which the allowed coordinate range can be visualised as a "box" in a two-dimensional plot. The solution is then completely parameterised by the locations of the edges of this box, at least in the uncharged case. We also briefly analyse other possible domain structures---in the shape of a triangle and trapezoid---that might describe physically interesting space-times within the AdS C-metric.
118466086
Autocorrelations of stellar light and mass at z∼ 0 and ∼1: from SDSS to DEEP2
We present measurements of projected autocorrelation functions wp(rp) for the stellar mass of galaxies and for their light in the U, B and V bands, using data from the third data release of the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey and the final data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We investigate the clustering bias of stellar mass and light by comparing these to projected autocorrelations of dark matter estimated from the Millennium Simulations (MS) at z = 1 and 0.07, the median redshifts of our galaxy samples. All of the autocorrelation and bias functions show systematic trends with spatial scale and waveband which are impressively similar at the two redshifts. This shows that the well-established environmental dependence of stellar populations in the local Universe is already in place at z = 1. The recent MS-based galaxy formation simulation of Guo et al. (2011) reproduces the scale-dependent clustering of luminosity to an accuracy better than 30% in all bands and at both redshifts, but substantially overpredicts mass autocorrelations at separations below about 2 Mpc. Further comparison of the shapes of our stellar mass bias functions with those predicted by the model suggests that both the SDSS and DEEP2 data prefer a fluctuation amplitude of σ8 � 0.8 rather than the σ8 = 0.9 assumed by the MS.
17292810
Rotating black lens solution in five dimensions
It has recently been shown that a stationary, asymptotically flat vacuum black hole in five space-time dimensions with two commuting axial symmetries must have an event horizon with either a spherical, ring or lens-space topology. In this paper, we study the third possibility, a so-called black lens with $L(n,1)$ horizon topology. Using the inverse scattering method, we construct a black-lens solution with the simplest possible rod structure, and possessing a single asymptotic angular momentum. Its properties are then analyzed; in particular, it is shown that there must either be a conical singularity or a naked curvature singularity present in the space-time.
119187489
ABSORPTION-LINE PROBES OF THE PREVALENCE AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS IN PRESENT-DAY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES
We analyze star-forming galaxies drawn from SDSS DR7 to show how the interstellar medium (ISM) Nai λλ5890, 5896 (Na D) absorption lines depend on galaxy physical properties, and to look for evidence of galactic winds. We combine the spectra of galaxies with similar geometry/physical parameters to create composite spectra with signalto-noise ∼300. The stellar continuum is modeled using stellar population synthesis models, and the continuumnormalized spectrum is fit with two Nai absorption components. We find that (1) ISM Na D absorption lines with equivalent widths EW > 0.8 A are only prevalent in disk galaxies with specific properties—large extinction (AV ), high star formation rates (SFR), high SFR per unit area (ΣSFR), or high stellar mass (M∗); (2) the ISM Na D absorption lines can be separated into two components: a quiescent disk-like component at the galaxy systemic velocity and an outflow component; (3) the disk-like component is much stronger in the edge-on systems, and the outflow component covers a wide angle but is stronger within 60 ◦ of the disk rotation axis; (4) the EW and covering factor of the disk component correlate strongly with dust attenuation, highlighting the importance that dust shielding may play in the survival of Nai; (5) the EW of the outflow component depends primarily on ΣSFR and secondarily on AV ; and (6) the outflow velocity varies from ∼120 to 160 km s −1 but shows little hint of a correlation with galaxy physical properties over the modest dynamic range that our sample probes (1.2 dex in log ΣSFR and 1 dex in log M∗).