1998/10/08 by F. Matteuccí, F. Matteucci, D. Romano +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9810125
11 pages, LaTeX, 10 Postscript figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics
arxiv created 1998/10/08 · openalex publication_date 1998/10/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge is treated here in the context of an inside-out model for the Galaxy formation. We assume that this central region evolved even faster than the Galactic halo and test the effect of changing the slope of the IMF on the predicted stellar metallicity distribution for bulge stars. An IMF favoring the formation of massive stars is found to improve the agreement with the most recently observed metallicity distribution of bulge K giants. Then, we make specific predictions about temporal evolution of several light and heavy species in the Galactic bulge. We predict that alpha-elements should be enhanced relative to Fe for most of the [Fe/H] range, with different degrees of enhancement due to the different nucleosynthetic history of each element, and show that Lithium abundance should follow a trend with metallicity similar to that found for the solar neighbourhood. Several possible stellar Li sources are discussed.