Using Cepheids to determine the galactic abundance gradient I. The solar neighbourhood

By S. Andrievsky, R. E. Luck, David Bersier, V. Klochkova, V. Panchuk, Isaac Newton, N. Arkhyz, Sao Ras. 2001

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A number of studies of abundance gradients in the galactic disk have been performed in recent years. The results obtained are rather disparate: from no detectable gradient to a rather signicant slope of about 0: 1d ex kpc 1 . The present study concerns the abundance gradient based on the spectroscopic analysis of a sample of classical Cepheids. These stars enable one to obtain reliable abundances of a variety of chemical elements. Additionally, they have well determined distances which allow an accurate determination of abundance distributions in the galactic disc. Using 236 high resolution spectra of 77 galactic Cepheids, the radial elemental distribution in the galactic disc between galactocentric distances in the range 6{11 kpc has been investigated. Gradients for 25 chemical elements (from carbon to gadolinium) are derived. The following results were obtained in this study. Almost all investigated elements show rather flat abundance distributions in the middle part of galactic disc. Typical values for iron-group elements lie within an interval from 0:02 to 0:04 dex kpc 1 (in particular, for iron we obtained d(Fe/H)/dRG = 0:029 dex kpc 1 ). Similar gradients were also obtained for O, Mg, Al, Si, and Ca. For sulphur we have found a steeper gradient ( 0:05 dex kpc 1 ). For elements from Zr to Gd we obtained (within the error bars) a near to zero gradient value. This result is reported for the rst time. Those elements whose abundance is not expected to be altered during the early stellar evolution (e.g. the iron-group elements) show at the solar galactocentric distance (El/H) values which are essentially solar. Therefore, there is no apparent reason to consider our Sun as a metal-rich star. The gradient values obtained in the present study indicate that the radial abundance distribution within 6{11 kpc is quite homogeneous, and this result favors a galactic model including a bar structure which may induce radial flows in the disc, and thus may be responsible for abundance homogenization.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6833ae8e793c4b1f470648a468a7c36ef9bfb8a5

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Citations in the corpus

The Distribution of the Elements in the Galactic Disk (2006, unknown): “In previous papers from this series (Andrievsky et al. 2002a [Paper II], 2002b [Paper III], 2002c [Paper I], 2004 [Paper V]; Luck et al. 2003 [Paper IV]; Kovtyukh et al. 2005b [KWA05]) we described the characteristic features of the metallicity distribution across the Galactic disk, as derived from…”
The Gaia-ESO Survey : radial metallicity gradients and age-metallicity relation of stars in the Milky Way disk (2014, background): “However, the bulk of the data has so far come from the traditional techniques, such as OB stars, Cepheids, and H II regions (Andrievsky et al. 2002b,a; Lépine et al. 2011; Lemasle et al. 2013).”
Isochrone ages for field dwarfs: method and application to the age–metallicity relation (2004, background): “R ∼ R0 Cepheids show a low abundance dispersion (Andrievsky et al. 2002); young open clusters show an abundance dispersion lower than 0.20 dex (Twarog 1980; Carraro et al. 1998).”
The Galactic abundance gradient from Cepheids - V. Transition zone between 10 and 11 kpc (2004, methodology): “In two previous papers (Paper III and Paper IV) from this series (Andrievsky et al. 2002a, 2002b, 2002c – Papers I, II, III respectively; Luck et al. 2003 – Paper IV) we described the characteristic features of the metallicity distribution across galactic disc, as derived from Cepheid variable…”
Cepheid parallaxes and the Hubble constant (2007, methodology): “Adopting the results of Andrievsky et al. (2002) and Sakai et al. (2004), as discussed by S2006 the LMC Cepheids are metal deficient by ∆[O/H ] = 0.26 on the “Te” abundance scale.”
The Hubble Constant: A Summary of the Hubble Space Telescope Program for the Luminosity Calibration of Type Ia Supernovae by Means of Cepheids (2006, methodology): “In this system Cepheids in the Galaxy have ½O/H ¼ 8:6 (Andrievsky et al. 2002) on average, and those in LMChave 8.34 (Sakai et al. 2004).”
Metallicity distributions of mono-age stellar populations of the Galactic disc from the LAMOST Galactic spectroscopic surveys (2018, background): “…in the radial and vertical directions have been determined with a variety of tracers, including OB stars (Daflon & Cunha 2004), Cepheid variables (Andrievsky et al. 2002; Luck, Kovtyukh & Andrievsky 2006), H II regions (Balser et al. 2011), open clusters (Chen, Hou & Wang 2003; Magrini et al.…”
Astrometry with the Hubble Space Telescope: A Parallax of the Fundamental Distance Calibrator δ Cephei (2002, methodology): “Specific to our calibration of the LMC P L relation, for Cep Andrievsky et al. (2002) find [O/H] = +0.01.”
Quantifying the uncertainties of chemical evolution studies II. Stellar yields (2010, methodology): “For the comparison with the observations, we use the homogeneous data for nearly 200 classical Cepheid variable stars presented in a series of papersby S. Andrievsky and collaborators (Andrievsky et al. 2002a,b,c; Luck et al. 2003; Andrievsky et al. 2004; Kovtyukh et al. 2005; Luck et al. 2006).”
Interstellar Turbulence II: Implications and Effects (2004, background): “A peculiar abundance gradient has been observed in the outer Galaxy, where clusters (Twarog et al. 1997) and Cepheids (Caputo et al. 2001, Andrievsky et al. 2002, Luck et al. 2003) suggest a sudden decrease in metal abundance by about 0.2 dex setting in at 10 kpc.”
A 3% SOLUTION: DETERMINATION OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE AND WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3 (2011, result): “While the abundances of MW Cepheids are not measured the same way (i.e., they are based on stellar absorption lines rather than on nearby ionized gas), they have been directly measured to be ∼0.3 dex higher than those of LMC Cepheids (Andrievsky et al. 2002; Romaniello et al. 2008).”
On the Galactic Disk Metallicity Distribution from Open Clusters. I. New Catalogs and Abundance Gradient (2002, result): “This result is also consistent with the abundance gradient determined by using Cepheids in the solar neighborhood (Andrievsky et al. 2002).”
Cepheid Distances to SNe Ia Host Galaxies Based on a Revised Photometric Zero Point of the HST WFPC2 and New PL Relations and Metallicity Corrections (2006, background): “Values of [Fe/H] are available for 14 of these Cepheids from Fry &Carney (1997), Andrievsky et al. (2002), andLuck et al. (2003); their mean is ½Fe/H ¼ 0:02 0:02.”