Heavy Element Abundances in Giant Stars of 47 Tuc

Abstract

This research forms part of an investigation into heavy element abundances in Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in various stellar environments. Seven giant stars in the southern globular cluster 47 Tuc have been observed using the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Abundances for five s- and r- process elements have been determined: the light s-process elements, Y and Zr; the heavy s-process elements, La and Nd; and the r-process element Eu. Mean enhancements in the light s-process, [ls/Fe], of ~+0.6 dex and heavy s-process elements, [hs/Fe], of ~+0.3 dex were determined for all the giant stars. There was no statistically significant difference between the abundances determined for the Red Giant Branch (RGB) and AGB stars in this study. The results for the RGB stars differ from those obtained by a number of previous studies. However, because of the similar abundance results obtained for the AGB and RGB stars in this study we believe this provides evidence for previous enrichment of the material from which these stars formed.

References in corpus (1)

• Heavy elements and chemical enrichment in globular clusters

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• The Chemical Evolution of Helium in Globular Clusters: Implications for the Self-Pollution Scenario
• Rubidium and lead abundances in giant stars of the globular clusters M4 and M5
• Variations in the lithium abundances of turn off stars in the globular cluster 47 Tuc
• A population of binaries in the Asymptotic Giant Branch of 47 Tucanae?
• s- and r-process element abundances in the CMD of 47 Tucanae using the Robert Stobie Spectrograph on SALT