ΔY/ ΔZ from the analysis of local K dwarfs

Abstract

The stellar helium-to-metal enrichment ratio, ΔY/ΔZ, is a widely studied astrophysical quantity. However, its value is still not precisely constrained. This paper is focused on the study of the main sources of uncertainty which affect the ΔY/ΔZ derived from the analysis of the low-main sequence (MS) stars in the solar neighborhood. The possibility to infer the value of ΔY/ΔZ from the study of low-MS stars relies on the dependence of the stellar luminosity and effective temperature on the initial Y and Z. The ΔY/ΔZ ratio is obtained by comparing the magnitude difference between the observed stars and a reference theoretical zero age main sequence (ZAMS) with the related theoretical magnitude differences computed from a new set of stellar models with up-to-date input physics and a fine grid of chemical compositions. A Monte Carlo approach has been used to evaluate the impact on the result of different sources of uncertainty, i.e. observational errors, evolutionary effects, systematic uncertainties of the models. As a check of the procedure, the method has been applied to a different data set, namely the low-MS of the Hyades. Once a set of ZAMS and atmosphere models have been chosen, we found that the inferred value of ΔY/ΔZ is sensitive to the age of the stellar sample, even if we restricted the data set to low luminosity stars. The lack of an accurate age estimate of low mass field stars leads to an underestimate of the inferred ΔY/ΔZ of ~2 units. On the contrary the method firmly recovers the ΔY/ΔZ value for not evolved samples of stars such as the Hyades low-MS. Adopting a solar calibrated mixing-length parameter and the PHOENIX GAIA v2.6.1 atmospheric models, we found ΔY/ΔZ = 5.3 +/- 1.4 once the age correction has been applied. The Hyades sample provided a perfectly consistent value.

Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

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