Using the Multi-Object Adaptive Optics demonstrator RAVEN to observe metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic Centre

Abstract

The chemical abundances for five metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic bulge have been determined from H-band infrared spectroscopy taken with the RAVEN multi-object adaptive optics science demonstrator and the IRCS spectrograph at the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. Three of these stars are in the Galactic bulge and have metallicities between -2.1 < [Fe/H] < -1.5, and high [alpha/Fe] ~+0.3, typical of Galactic disk and bulge stars in this metallicity range; [Al/Fe] and [N/Fe] are also high, whereas [C/Fe] < +0.3. An examination of their orbits suggests that two of these stars may be confined to the Galactic bulge and one is a halo trespasser, though proper motion values used to calculate orbits are quite uncertain. An additional two stars in the globular cluster M22 show [Fe/H] values consistent to within 1 sigma, although one of these two stars has [Fe/H] = -2.01 +/- 0.09, which is on the low end for this cluster. The [alpha/Fe] and [Ni/Fe] values differ by 2 sigma, with the most metal-poor star showing significantly higher values for these elements. M22 is known to show element abundance variations, consistent with a multi-population scenario (i.e. Marino et al. 2009, 2011; Alves-Brito et al. 2012) though our results cannot discriminate this clearly given our abundance uncertainties. This is the first science demonstration of multi-object adaptive optics with high resolution infrared spectroscopy, and we also discuss the feasibility of this technique for use in the upcoming era of 30-m class telescope facilities.

23 pages, 11 figures, Accepted to MNRAS

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• Pristine IX: CFHT ESPaDOnS Spectroscopic Analysis of 115 Bright Metal-Poor Candidate Stars
• The Bulge Radial Velocity Assay for RR Lyrae stars (BRAVA-RR) DR2: a Bimodal Bulge?
• The Most Metal-poor Stars in the Inner Bulge
• Abundance analysis of APOGEE spectra for 58 metal-poor stars from the bulge spheroid
• Chemical Abundances Of Open Clusters From High-Resolution Infrared Spectra. I. NGC 6940
• Statistics of Turbulence Parameters at Maunakea using multiple wave-front sensor data of RAVEN
• UVES analysis of red giants in the bulge globular cluster NGC 6522