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Title: The COMBS Survey – III. The chemodynamical origins of metal-poor bulge stars

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [1]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4];  [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7]
  1. University of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
  2. Flatiron Institute, New York, NY (United States)
  3. University of Central Lancashire, Preston (United Kingdom)
  4. University of Texas, Austin, TX (United States); University of Chicago, IL (United States)
  5. Lund Observatory, Lund (Sweden)
  6. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT (Australia)
  7. University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield (United Kingdom)

The characteristics of the stellar populations in the Galactic bulge inform and constrain the Milky Way’s formation and evolution. The metal-poor population is particularly important in light of cosmological simulations, which predict that some of the oldest stars in the Galaxy now reside in its centre. The metal-poor bulge appears to consist of multiple stellar populations that require dynamical analyses to disentangle. In this work, we undertake a detailed chemodynamical study of the metal-poor stars in the inner Galaxy. Using R ~ 20000 VLT/GIRAFFE spectra of 319 metal-poor (-2.55 dex ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ 0.83 dex, with $$\overline{[Fe/H]}$$ = -0.84 dex) stars, we perform stellar parameter analysis and report 12 elemental abundances (C, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, Cr, Mn, Zn, Ba, and Ce) with precisions of ≈0.10 dex. Based on kinematic and spatial properties, we categorize the stars into four groups, associated with the following Galactic structures: the inner bulge, the outer bulge, the halo, and the disc. We find evidence that the inner and outer bulge population is more chemically complex (i.e. higher chemical dimensionality and less correlated abundances) than the halo population. This result suggests that the older bulge population was enriched by a larger diversity of nucleosynthetic events. We also find one inner bulge star with a [Ca/Mg] ratio consistent with theoretical pair-instability supernova yields and two stars that have chemistry consistent with globular cluster stars.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); National Science Foundation (NSF); Science and Technology Facilities Council; Swedish Research Council (SRC); Heising-Simons Foundation; United Kingdom Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC)
Grant/Contract Number:
NA0003843; 000392968; ST/R000786/1; 2018-04857; 2019-2021; 2018-2020; AST-1907417; ST/R000905/1
OSTI ID:
1979519
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 509, Issue 1; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Oxford University PressCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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