Sulphur abundances in halo giants from the [S I] line at 1082 nm and the
  S I triplet around 1045 nm
  It is still debated whether or not the Galactic chemical evolution of sulphur
in the halo followed the constant or flat trend with [Fe/H], ascribed to the
result of explosive nucleosynthesis in type II SNe. The aim of this study is to
try to clarify this situation by measuring the sulphur abundance in a sample of
halo giants using two diagnostics; the S I triplet around 1045 nm and the [S I]
line at 1082 nm. The latter of the two is not believed to be sensitive to
non-LTE effects. We can thereby minimize the uncertainties in the diagnostic
used and estimate the usefulness of the triplet in sulphur determination in
halo K giants. We will also be able to compare our sulphur abundance
differences from the two diagnostics with the expected non-LTE effects in the
1045 nm triplet previously calculated by others. High-resolution near-infrared
spectra of ten K giants were recorded using the spectrometer CRIRES mounted on
VLT. Two standard settings were used; one covering the S I triplet and one
covering the [S I] line. The sulphur abundances were determined individually
with equivalent widths and synthetic spectra for the two diagnostics using
tailored 1D model atmospheres and relying on non-LTE corrections from the
litterature. Effects of convective inhomogeneities in the stellar atmospheres
are investigated. We corroborate the flat trend in the [S/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] plot
for halo stars found in other works and cannot find a scatter nor a rise in
[S/Fe] obtained in some other previous studies. We find the sulphur abundances
deduced from the non-LTE corrected triplet somewhat lower than the abundances
from the [S I] line, possibly indicating too large non-LTE corrections.
Considering 3D modeling, however, they might instead be too small. Further we
show that the [S I] line is possible to use as a sulphur diagnostic down to
[Fe/H] = -2.3 in giants.
