The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: surface chemical compositions of B-type stars in the Magellanic Clouds

By I. Hunter, P. Dufton, S. Smartt, R. Ryans, C. Evans, D. Lennon, C. Trundle, I. Hubeny, T. Q. U. O. Belfast, R. Observatory and 7 more. 2006

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analysis of high-resolution FLAMES spectra of approximately 50 early B-type stars in three young clusters at different metallicities, NGC 6611 in the Galaxy, N 11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Using the tlusty non-LTE model atmospheres code, atmospheric parameters and photospheric abundances (C, N, O, Mg and Si) of each star have been determined. These results represent a significant improvement on the number of Magellanic Cloud B-type stars with detailed and homogeneous estimates of their atmospheric parameters and chemical compositions. The relationships between effective temperature and spectral type are discussed for all three metallicity regimes, with the effective temperature for a given spectral type increasing as one moves to a lower metallicity regime. Additionally the difficulties in estimating the microturbulent velocity and the anomalous values obtained, particularly in the lowest metallicity regime, are discussed. Our chemical composition estimates are compared with previous studies, both stellar and interstellar with, in general, encouraging agreement being found. Abundances in the Magellanic Clouds relative to the Galaxy are discussed and we also present our best estimates of the base-line chemical composition of the LMC and SMC as derived from B-type stars. Additionally we discuss the use of nitrogen as a probe of the evolutionary history of stars, investigating the roles of rotational mixing, mass-loss, blue loops and binarity on the observed nitrogen abundances and making comparisons with stellar evolutionary models where possible.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de47b1f56f0140f1c77e495a2dd3ff02c4f003f0

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Langer
2. Selma de Mink
3. N. Smith
4. Michela Mapelli
5. J. Vink
6. S. Smartt
7. C. Conroy
8. Stan Woosley

In Instrumentation

1. Selma de Mink
2. N. Langer
3. C. Conroy
4. J. Vink
5. N. Smith
6. A. Chieffi
7. M. Limongi
8. Benjamin D. Johnson

Citations in the corpus

• MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): PLANETS, OSCILLATIONS, ROTATION, AND MASSIVE STARS (2013, background): “Although beyond the scope of this paper, such comparisons are critical when coupled to observations of the effects of rotation in stars (e.g., Hunter et al. 2007; Evans et al. 2011) including asteroseismology (Beck et al. 2012; Mosser et al. 2012).”
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XXVII. Physical parameters of B-type main-sequence binary systems in the Tarantula nebula (2017, unknown): “Such targets have also been found in other presumably single-star samples in the Magellanic Cloud (Hunter et al. 2007, 2008, 2009; Trundle et al. 2007).”
• The Wolf-Rayet stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud - A comprehensive analysis of the WN class (2014, methodology): “The results from two such studies (Hunter et al. 2007; Korn et al. 2005) are listed in Table 1.”
• The empirical metallicity dependence of the mass-loss rate of O- and early B-type stars (2007, background): “The abundance of the α elements in the LMC relative to solar from Hunter et al. (2007) and Trundle et al. (2007) is ∆[α/H] = −0.36 ± 0.1 dex.”
• Rotational mixing in massive binaries - Detached short-period systems (2009, methodology): “For C, O, Mg and Si we use the average abundances determined for stars in the VLT-FLAMES survey (Hunter et al. 2007).”
• Sub-surface convection zones in hot massive stars and their observable consequences (2009, background): “Trends of the microturbulent velocity with log g have been previously reported for hot stars (e.g. Gies & Lambert 1992; Hunter et al. 2007).”
• EXTRAGALACTIC CHEMICAL ABUNDANCES: DO H ii REGIONS AND YOUNG STARS TELL THE SAME STORY? THE CASE OF THE SPIRAL GALAXY NGC 300 (2009, background): “In doing so, the comparison is limited to chemical elements that are measurable in both types of objects and that, contrary to nitrogen, are largely unaffected by rotational mixing (Maeder & Meynet 2000; Hunter et al. 2007).”
• Present-day cosmic abundances - A comprehensive study of nearby early B-type stars and implications for stellar and Galactic evolution and interstellar dust models (2012, result): “In the extremes, error estimates of up to 40-60% in surface gravity nd a factor 3-5 in elemental abundances are found in the literature (e.g. Hunter et al. 2007; Trundle et al. 2007). turned out to be chemically homogeneous on the 10% level, corroborating earlier findings from analyses of the ISM…”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, background): “…1983; Pinsonneault 1997; Heger et al. 2000; Maeder & Meynet 2000; Palacios et al. 2003; Talon & Charbonnel 2005; Denissenkov & Pinsonneault 2007; Hunter et al. 2007; Chieffi & Limongi 2013; Cantiello et al. 2014), but it remains as one of the most challenging and uncertain problems in stellar…”
• Exploring Fundamentally Three-dimensional Phenomena in High-fidelity Simulations of Core-collapse Supernovae (2018, unknown): “Software: FLASH (Fryxell et al. 2000; Dubey et al. 2009), GR1D (O’Connor & Ott 2010; O’Connor 2015), Matplotlib (Hunter et al. 2007), yt (Turk et al. 2010), HEALPix/healpy (Górski et al. 2005), MESA (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018), VisIt (Childs et al. 2012) REFERENCES Andresen, H., Müller,”
• Galaxies with Wolf-Rayet signatures in the low-redshift Universe. A survey using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2008, background): “While there could also be a contribution from OB stars, given their observed elevated surfaced abundance (e.g. Hunter et al. 2008, 2007), it is not clear that this would cause a systematic offset at low EW(Hβ).”
• The VLT FLAMES Survey of Massive Stars: Rotation and Nitrogen Enrichment as the Key to Understanding Massive Star Evolution (2007, background): “Hunter et al. (2007) and Trundle et al. (2007) (hereafter Papers I and II, respectively) have presented chemical abundances for the narrow-lined objects (predominately slow rotators) in the LMC sample.”
• PRE-SUPERNOVA EVOLUTION OF ROTATING SOLAR METALLICITY STARS IN THE MASS RANGE 13–120 M☉ AND THEIR EXPLOSIVE YIELDS (2012, background): “…Program, a series of papers came out over the years presenting a large database of stars for which a quite detailed surface chemical abundances and projected rotational velocities (v sin(i)) are now available (Hunter et al. 2007; Trundle et al. 2007; Hunter et al. 2008, 2009; Dunstall et al. 2011).”