The Galactic Bulge exploration III.: Calcium Triplet Metallicities for RR Lyrae Stars

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kunder, Andrea, Prudil, Zdenek, Skaggs, Claire, Reggiani, Henrique, Nataf, David M., Hughes, Joanne, Covey, Kevin R., Devine, Kathryn
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Kunder, Andrea
Prudil, Zdenek
Skaggs, Claire
Reggiani, Henrique
Nataf, David M.
Hughes, Joanne
Covey, Kevin R.
Devine, Kathryn
author_facet Kunder, Andrea
Prudil, Zdenek
Skaggs, Claire
Reggiani, Henrique
Nataf, David M.
Hughes, Joanne
Covey, Kevin R.
Devine, Kathryn
contents RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of stellar populations for old, metal-poor components in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group. Their luminosities have a metallicity-dependence, but determining spectroscopic [Fe/H] metallicities for RR Lyrae stars, especially at distances outside the solar neighbourhood, is challenging. Using 40 RRLs with metallicities derived from both Fe(II) and Fe(I) abundances, we verify the calibration between the [Fe/H] of RR Lyrae stars from the Calcium triplet. Our calibration is applied to all RR Lyrae stars with Gaia RVS spectra in Gaia DR3 as well as to 80 stars in the inner Galaxy from the BRAVA-RR survey. The co-added Gaia RVS RR Lyrae spectra provide RR Lyrae metallicities with an uncertainty of 0.25~dex, which is a factor of two improvement over the Gaia photometric RR Lyrae metallicities. Within our Galactic bulge RR Lyrae star sample, we find a dominant fraction with low energies without a prominent rotating component. Due to the large fraction of such stars, we interpret these stars as belonging to the $in-situ$ metal-poor Galactic bulge component, although we can not rule out that a fraction of these belong to an ancient accretion event such as Kraken/Heracles.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_01515
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Galactic Bulge exploration III.: Calcium Triplet Metallicities for RR Lyrae Stars
Kunder, Andrea
Prudil, Zdenek
Skaggs, Claire
Reggiani, Henrique
Nataf, David M.
Hughes, Joanne
Covey, Kevin R.
Devine, Kathryn
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of stellar populations for old, metal-poor components in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group. Their luminosities have a metallicity-dependence, but determining spectroscopic [Fe/H] metallicities for RR Lyrae stars, especially at distances outside the solar neighbourhood, is challenging. Using 40 RRLs with metallicities derived from both Fe(II) and Fe(I) abundances, we verify the calibration between the [Fe/H] of RR Lyrae stars from the Calcium triplet. Our calibration is applied to all RR Lyrae stars with Gaia RVS spectra in Gaia DR3 as well as to 80 stars in the inner Galaxy from the BRAVA-RR survey. The co-added Gaia RVS RR Lyrae spectra provide RR Lyrae metallicities with an uncertainty of 0.25~dex, which is a factor of two improvement over the Gaia photometric RR Lyrae metallicities. Within our Galactic bulge RR Lyrae star sample, we find a dominant fraction with low energies without a prominent rotating component. Due to the large fraction of such stars, we interpret these stars as belonging to the $in-situ$ metal-poor Galactic bulge component, although we can not rule out that a fraction of these belong to an ancient accretion event such as Kraken/Heracles.
title The Galactic Bulge exploration III.: Calcium Triplet Metallicities for RR Lyrae Stars
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01515