We report the kinematic, orbital, and chemical properties of 12 stellar streams with no evident progenitors using line-of-sight velocities and metallicities from the Southern Stellar Stream ...Spectroscopic Survey (S5), proper motions from Gaia EDR3, and distances derived from distance tracers or the literature. This data set provides the largest homogeneously analyzed set of streams with full 6D kinematics and metallicities. All streams have heliocentric distances between ∼10 and 50 kpc. The velocity and metallicity dispersions show that half of the stream progenitors were disrupted dwarf galaxies (DGs), while the other half originated from disrupted globular clusters (GCs), hereafter referred to as DG and GC streams. Based on the mean metallicities of the streams and the mass–metallicity relation, the luminosities of the progenitors of the DG streams range between those of Carina and Ursa Major I (−9.5 ≲ MV ≲ −5.5). Four of the six GC streams have mean metallicities of Fe/H < −2, more metal poor than typical Milky Way (MW) GCs at similar distances. Interestingly, the 300S and Jet GC streams are the only streams on retrograde orbits in our dozen-stream sample. Finally, we compare the orbital properties of the streams with known DGs and GCs in the MW, finding several possible associations. Some streams appear to have been accreted with the recently discovered Gaia–Enceladus–Sausage system, and others suggest that GCs were formed in and accreted together with the progenitors of DG streams whose stellar masses are similar to those of Draco to Carina (∼105–106 M⊙).
Large stellar surveys are revealing the chemodynamical structure of the Galaxy across a vast spatial extent. However, the many millions of low-resolution spectra observed to date are yet to be fully ...exploited. We employ The Cannon, a data-driven approach for estimating chemical abundances, to obtain detailed abundances from low-resolution (R = 1800) LAMOST spectra, using the GALAH survey as our reference. We deliver five (for dwarfs) or six (for giants) estimated abundances representing five different nucleosynthetic channels, for 3.9 million stars, to a precision of 0.05-0.23 dex. Using wide binary pairs, we demonstrate that our abundance estimates provide chemical discriminating power beyond metallicity alone. We show the coverage of our catalog with radial, azimuthal and dynamical abundance maps and examine the neutron capture abundances across the disk and halo, which indicate different origins for the in situ and accreted halo populations. LAMOST has near-complete Gaia coverage and provides an unprecedented perspective on chemistry across the Milky Way.
Open cluster members are coeval and share the same initial bulk chemical composition. Consequently, differences in surface abundances between members of a cluster that are at different evolutionary ...stages can be used to study the effects of mixing and internal chemical processing. We carry out an abundance analysis of seven elements (Li, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, and Fe) in 66 stars belonging to the open cluster m67, based on high resolution GALAH spectra, 1D MARCS model atmospheres, and non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) radiative transfer. From the non-LTE analysis, we find a typical star-to-star scatter in the abundance ratios of around O.05 dex. We find trends in the abundance ratios with effective temperature, indicating systematic differences in the surface abundances between turn-off and giant stars; these trends are more pronounced when LTE is assumed. However, trends with effective temperature remain significant for Al and Si also in non-LTE. Finally, we compare the derived abundances with prediction from stellar evolution models including effects of atomic diffusion. We find overall good agreement for the abundance patterns of dwarfs and sub-giant stars, but the abundances of cool giants are lower relative to less evolved stars than predicted by the diffusion models, in particular for Mg.
ABSTRACT
Using data from the GALAH survey, we explore the dependence of elemental abundances on stellar age and metallicity among Galactic disc stars. We find that the abundance of most elements can ...be predicted from age and Fe/H with an intrinsic scatter of about 0.03 dex. We discuss the possible causes for the existence of the abundance–age–metallicity relations. Using a stochastic chemical enrichment scheme that takes the volume of supernovae remnants into account, we show the intrinsic scatter is expected to be small, about 0.05 dex or even smaller if there is additional mixing in the ISM. Elemental abundances show trends with both age and metallicity and the relationship is well described by a simple model in which the dependence of abundance (X/Fe) on age and Fe/H are additively separable. Elements can be grouped based on the direction of their abundance gradient in the (age,Fe/H) plane and different groups can be roughly associated with three distinct nucleosynthetic production sites, the exploding massive stars, the exploding white dwarfs, and the AGB stars. However, the abundances of some elements, like Co, La, and Li, show large scatter for a given age and metallicity, suggesting processes other than simple Galactic chemical evolution are at play. We also compare the abundance trends of main-sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars against that of giants, whose ages were estimated using asteroseismic information from the K2 mission. For most elements, the trends of MSTO stars are similar to that of giants. The existence of abundance relations implies that we can estimate the age and birth radius of disc stars, which is important for studying the dynamic and chemical evolution of the Galaxy.
We present a study using the second data release of the GALAH survey of stellar parameters and elemental abundances of 15 pairs of stars identified by Oh et al. They identified these pairs as ...potentially co-moving pairs using proper motions and parallaxes from Gaia DR1. We find that 11 very wide (>1 pc) pairs of stars do in fact have similar Galactic orbits, while a further four claimed co-moving pairs are not truly co-orbiting. Eight of the 11 co-orbiting pairs have reliable stellar parameters and abundances, and we find that three of those are quite similar in their abundance patterns, while five have significant Fe/H differences. For the latter, this indicates that they could be co-orbiting because of the general dynamical coldness of the thin disc, or perhaps resonances induced by the Galaxy, rather than a shared formation site. Stars such as these, wide binaries, debris of past star formation episodes, and coincidental co-orbiters, are crucial for exploring the limits of chemical tagging in the Milky Way.
ABSTRACT
Due to its proximity, the Orion star forming region is often used as a proxy to study processes related to star formation and to observe young stars in the environment they were born in. ...With the release of Gaia DR2, the distance measurements to the Orion complex are now good enough that the 3D structure of the complex can be explored. Here we test the hypothesis that, due to non-trivial structure and dynamics, and age spread in the Orion complex, the chemical enrichment of youngest stars by early core-collapse supernovae can be observed. We obtained spectra of 794 stars of the Orion complex with the HERMES spectrograph at the Anglo Australian telescope as a part of the GALAH and GALAH-related surveys. We use the spectra of ∼300 stars to derive precise atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances of 25 elements for 15 stellar clusters in the Orion complex. We demonstrate that the Orion complex is chemically homogeneous and that there was no self-pollution of young clusters by core-collapse supernovae from older clusters; with a precision of 0.02 dex in relative alpha-elements abundance and 0.06 dex in oxygen abundance we would have been able to detect pollution from a single supernova, given a fortunate location of the SN and favourable conditions for ISM mixing. We estimate that the supernova rate in the Orion complex was very low, possibly producing no supernova by the time the youngest stars of the observed population formed (from around 21 to 8 Myr ago).
Carbon capture and sequestration is a key element of global initiatives to minimize anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Although many investigations of new candidate CO2 capture materials focus ...on equilibrium adsorption properties, it is also critical to consider adsorption/desorption kinetics when evaluating adsorbent performance. Diamine-appended variants of the metal–organic framework Mg2(dobpdc) (dobpdc4− = 4,4′-dioxidobiphenyl-3,3′-dicarboxylate) are promising materials for CO2 capture because of their cooperative chemisorption mechanism and associated step-shaped equilibrium isotherms, which enable large working capacities to be accessed with small temperature swings. However, the adsorption/desorption kinetics of these unique materials remain understudied. More generally, despite the necessity of kinetics characterization to advance adsorbents toward commercial separations, detailed kinetic studies of metal–organic framework-based gas separations remain rare. Here, we systematically investigate the CO2 adsorption kinetics of diamine-appended Mg2(dobpdc) variants using a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) assay. In particular, we examine the effects of diamine structure, temperature, and partial pressure on CO2 adsorption and desorption kinetics. Importantly, most diamine-appended Mg2(dobpdc) variants exhibit an induction period prior to reaching the maximum rate of CO2 adsorption, which we attribute to their unique cooperative chemisorption mechanism. In addition, these materials exhibit inverse Arrhenius behavior, displaying faster adsorption kinetics and shorter induction periods at lower temperatures. Using the Avrami model for nucleation and growth kinetics, we determine rate constants for CO2 adsorption and quantitatively compare rate constants among different diamine-appended variants. Overall, these results provide guidelines for optimizing adsorbent design to facilitate CO2 capture from diverse target streams and highlight kinetic phenomena relevant for other materials in which cooperative chemisorption mechanisms are operative.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, UL, UM, UPUK
ABSTRACT
We present isochrone ages and initial bulk metallicities ($\rm Fe/H_{bulk}$, by accounting for diffusion) of 163 722 stars from the GALAH Data Release 2, mainly composed of main-sequence ...turn-off stars and subgiants ($7000\, \mathrm{ K}> T_{\mathrm{ eff}}> 4000\, \mathrm{ K}$ and $\log g>3$ dex). The local age–metallicity relationship (AMR) is nearly flat but with significant scatter at all ages; the scatter is even higher when considering the observed surface abundances. After correcting for selection effects, the AMR appears to have intrinsic structures indicative of two star formation events, which we speculate are connected to the thin and thick discs in the solar neighbourhood. We also present abundance ratio trends for 16 elements as a function of age, across different $\rm Fe/H_{bulk}$ bins. In general, we find the trends in terms of X/Fe versus age from our far larger sample to be compatible with studies based on small (∼100 stars) samples of solar twins, but we now extend them to both sub- and supersolar metallicities. The α-elements show differing behaviour: the hydrostatic α-elements O and Mg show a steady decline with time for all metallicities, while the explosive α-elements Si, Ca, and Ti are nearly constant during the thin-disc epoch (ages $\lesssim \! 12$ Gyr). The s-process elements Y and Ba show increasing X/Fe with time while the r-process element Eu has the opposite trend, thus favouring a primary production from sources with a short time delay such as core-collapse supernovae over long-delay events such as neutron star mergers.
ABSTRACT
The European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia mission has enabled the remarkable discovery that a large fraction of the stars near the solar neighbourhood are debris from a single in-falling system, ...the so-called Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE). This discovery provides astronomers for the first time with a large cohort of easily observable, unevolved stars that formed in a single extragalactic environment. Here we use these stars to investigate the ‘Spite plateau’ – the near-constant lithium abundance observed in unevolved metal-poor stars across a wide range of metallicities (−3 < Fe/H < −1). Our aim is to test whether individual galaxies could have different Spite plateaus – e.g. the interstellar medium could be more depleted in lithium in a lower galactic mass system due to it having a smaller reservoir of gas. We identified 93 GSE dwarf stars observed and analysed by the GALactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey as part of its Data Release 3 (DR3). Orbital actions were used to select samples of GSE stars, and comparison samples of halo and disc stars. We find that the GSE stars show the same lithium abundance as other likely accreted stars and in situ Milky Way stars. Formation environment leaves no imprint on lithium abundances. This result fits within the growing consensus that the Spite plateau, and more generally the ‘cosmological lithium problem’ – the observed discrepancy between the amount of lithium in warm, metal-poor dwarf stars in our Galaxy, and the amount of lithium predicted to have been produced by big bang nucleosynthesis – is the result of lithium depletion processes within stars.
The GALAH survey: chemical clocks Hayden, Michael R; Sharma, Sanjib; Bland-Hawthorn, Joss ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
11/2022, Volume:
517, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
We present the first large-scale study that demonstrates how ages can be determined for large samples of stars through Galactic chemical evolution. Previous studies found that the elemental ...abundances of a star correlate directly with its age and metallicity. Using this knowledge, we derive ages for 214 577 stars in GALAH DR3 using only overall metallicities and chemical abundances. Stellar ages are estimated via the machine learning algorithm XGBoost for stars belonging to the Milky Way disc with metallicities in the range −1 < Fe/H < 0.5, using main-sequence turn-off stars as our training set. We find that stellar ages for the bulk of GALAH DR3 are precise to 1–2 Gyr using this method. With these ages, we replicate many recent results on the age-kinematic trends of the nearby disc, including the solar neighbourhood’s age–velocity dispersion relationship and the larger global velocity dispersion relations of the disc found using Gaia and GALAH. These results show that chemical abundance variations at a given birth radius are small, and that strong chemical tagging of stars directly to birth clusters may prove difficult with our current elemental abundance precision. Our results highlight the need to measure abundances for as many nucleosynthetic production sites as possible in order to estimate reliable ages from chemistry. Our methods open a new door into studies of the kinematic structure and evolution of the disc, as ages may potentially be estimated to a precision of 1–2 Gyr for a large fraction of stars in existing spectroscopic surveys.