HERBS II: Detailed chemical compositions of Galactic bulge stars

Abstract

This work explores the detailed chemistry of the Milky Way bulge using the HERMES spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Here we present the abundance ratios of 13 elements for 832 red giant branch and clump stars along the minor bulge axis at latitudes $b=-10^{\circ },-7.5$ and $-5^{\circ }$. Our results show that none of the abundance ratios vary significantly with latitude. We also observe {\color{red}disk-like} [Na/Fe] abundance ratios, which indicates the bulge does not contain helium-enhanced populations as observed in some globular clusters. Helium enhancement is therefore not the likely explanation for the double red-clump observed in the bulge. We confirm that bulge stars mostly follow abundance trends observed in the disk. However, this similarity is not confirmed across for all elements and metallicity regimes. The more metal-poor bulge population at [Fe/H] $\lesssim -0.8$ is enhanced in the elements associated with core collapse supernovae (SNeII). In addition, the [La/Eu] abundance ratio suggests higher $r$-process contribution, and likely higher star formation in the bulge compared to the disk. This highlights the complex evolution in the bulge, which should be investigated further, both in terms of modelling; and with additional observations of the inner Galaxy.

14 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to MNRAS July 2018; revised version. Online data access

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• Modelling the chemical evolution of Zr, La, Ce and Eu in the Galactic discs and bulge
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• A new set of chisels for Galactic archaeology: Sc, V and Zn as taggers of accreted globular clusters
• Chemistry of multiple stellar populations in the mono-metallic, in situ, bulge globular cluster NGC 6388
• Comparison of the Stellar Populations of Bulges and Discs using the MaNGA Survey
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