2008/04/25 by Stefan Uttenthaler, S. Uttenthaler, Thomas Lebzelter +9 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Abundance (ecology) #Abundance of the chemical elements #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Asymptotic giant branch #Bulge #Line (geometry) #Metallicity #Nucleosynthesis #Spectral line #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/589536
11 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication by ApJ
arxiv created 2008/04/25 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present measurements of the fluorine abundance in a Galactic bulge asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star. The measurements were performed using high-resolution K -band spectra obtained with the CRIRES spectrograph, which has been recently installed at ESO's VLT, together with state-of-the-art model atmospheres and synthetic spectra. This represents the first fluorine abundance measurement in a Galactic bulge star, and one of few measurements of this kind in a third dredge-up oxygen-rich AGB star. The F abundance is found to be close to the solar value scaled down to the metallicity of the star, and in agreement with disk giants that are comparable to the bulge giant studied here. The measurement is of astrophysical interest also because the star's mass can be estimated rather accurately (1.4≲ M/ M ☉ ≲ 2.0). AGB nucleosynthesis models predict only a very mild enrichment of F in such low mass AGB stars. Thus, we suggest that the fluorine abundance found in the studied star is representative for the star's natal cloud, and that fluorine must have been produced at a similar level in the bulge and in the disk.