Clues to galaxy evolution from spectroscopic observations of Galactic centre stars

In this work we present results from spectroscopic observations of Galactic centre stars. High resolution stellar spectroscopy can be used to determine accurate stellar metallicities and abundances. Observing stars in the Galactic centre is challenging due to extreme extinction. However, observing bright M giants in the K band is viable with 10 m telescopes, which is what has been carried out in this work using the Keck II telescope at W. M. Keck Observatory, Hawai'i.We provide a metallicity distribution of a sample of stars observed in the Galactic centre and show that the sampled stars on average have a metallicity comparable to the Sun, with a subset of the sample having a very high metallicity. We also investigate the silicon abundance of the stars as an alpha tracer, and show that in general there is a similarity between the Galactic centre stars and stars further out. However, for the high metallicity subsample stars in the Galactic centre, there is evidence for a possible alpha enrichment beyond what is found elsewhere in the Galaxy.Alpha enrichment is a powerful diagnostic as it is central to chemical evolution models giving constraints important for the development of galactic formation and evolution theories. We model the determined alpha enrichment and suggest that there might have been a recent starburst event, or maybe there was a pause in star formation between 3 and 12 Gyr ago. We model different pause scenarios. Further observations of a larger number of stars, and other tracers of alpha elements, are required to verify this result.We also investigate claims of increased scandium abundances in the Galactic centre and find that the extremely strong scandium lines could be explained by a better understanding of the atomic physics properties of scandium, rather than a high scandium abundance. We find similarly strong scandium lines in stars further out in the Galaxy.We have thus demonstrated that the determination of abundances of Galactic centre stars is now possible and that future investigation of more stars and more elements will provide necessary and strong constraints to theories of how the Galactic centre have formed and evolved

A kinematic check of the distance scale of Galactic Cepheids

A selection of well known period luminosity relations for cepheid variables are studied under the assumption that cepheid variables have a mean vertical velocity of zero in the galactic plane. Proper motion data from Hipparcos and Thyco-2 catalogues are coupled with the distances obtained from applying the period luminosity relations on a database of known classical cepheids to calculate the velocities of the cepheids. A statistical analysis is performed on the velocities to identify the best sample of cepheids to perform the kinematic check on. Two samples are found depending on whether the period luminosity relation has a colour term or not. Examining the samples leads to rejecting one sample and the other sample shows that in order to agree with the above assumption the solar vertical velocity is unlikely to be around the conventional 7 km/s, but has to be lowered to around 6.5 km/s or less; or the period luminosity relations have to be corrected on the order of -0.2 mag, i.e.\ a little brighter than previously assumed. It is further argued that the correction to the period luminosity relations is more in agreement with other studies than lowering the solar velocity

Origin of an Orbiting Star Around the Galactic Supermassive Black Hole

The tremendous tidal force that is linked to the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of our galaxy is expected to strongly subdue star formation in its vicinity. Stars within 1" from the SMBH thus likely formed further from the SMBH and migrated to their current positions. In this study, spectroscopic observations of the star S0-6/S10, one of the closest (projected distance from the SMBH of about 0.3") late-type stars were conducted. Using metal absorption lines in the spectra of S0-6, the radial velocity of S0-6 from 2014 to 2021 was measured, and a marginal acceleration was detected, which indicated that S0-6 is close to the SMBH. The S0-6 spectra were employed to determine its stellar parameters including temperature, chemical abundances ([M/H], [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe], [Ca/Fe], [Mg/Fe], [Ti/Fe]), and age. As suggested by the results of this study, S0-6 is very old (> ~10 Gyr) and has an origin different from that of stars born in the central pc region.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 10 tables, accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Ser. B, Physical and Biological Science

The JWST Galactic Center Survey -- A White Paper

The inner hundred parsecs of the Milky Way hosts the nearest supermassive black hole, largest reservoir of dense gas, greatest stellar density, hundreds of massive main and post main sequence stars, and the highest volume density of supernovae in the Galaxy. As the nearest environment in which it is possible to simultaneously observe many of the extreme processes shaping the Universe, it is one of the most well-studied regions in astrophysics. Due to its proximity, we can study the center of our Galaxy on scales down to a few hundred AU, a hundred times better than in similar Local Group galaxies and thousands of times better than in the nearest active galaxies. The Galactic Center (GC) is therefore of outstanding astrophysical interest. However, in spite of intense observational work over the past decades, there are still fundamental things unknown about the GC. JWST has the unique capability to provide us with the necessary, game-changing data. In this White Paper, we advocate for a JWST NIRCam survey that aims at solving central questions, that we have identified as a community: i) the 3D structure and kinematics of gas and stars; ii) ancient star formation and its relation with the overall history of the Milky Way, as well as recent star formation and its implications for the overall energetics of our galaxy's nucleus; and iii) the (non-)universality of star formation and the stellar initial mass function. We advocate for a large-area, multi-epoch, multi-wavelength NIRCam survey of the inner 100\,pc of the Galaxy in the form of a Treasury GO JWST Large Program that is open to the community. We describe how this survey will derive the physical and kinematic properties of ~10,000,000 stars, how this will solve the key unknowns and provide a valuable resource for the community with long-lasting legacy value.Comment: This White Paper will be updated when required (e.g. new authors joining, editing of content). Most recent update: 24 Oct 202

Atomic Data Needs in Astrophysics: The Galactic Center “Scandium Mystery”

Investigating the Galactic center offers unique insights into the buildup and history of our Galaxy and is a stepping stone to understand galaxies in a larger context. It is reasonable to expect that the stars found in the Galactic center might have a different composition compared to stars found in the local neighborhood around the Sun. It is therefore quite exciting when recently there were reports of unusual neutral scandium, yttrium, and vanadium abundances found in the Galactic center stars, compared to local neighborhood stars. To explain the scandium abundances in the Galactic center, we turn to recent laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations done on the atomic oscillator strengths of neutral scandium lines in the near infrared. We combine these with measurements of the hyper fine splitting of neutral scandium. We show how these results can be used to explain the reported unusual scandium abundances and conclude that in this respect, the environment of the Galactic center is not that different from the environment in the local neighborhood around the sun

Interfacing HepMC with Alice Analysis Framework

An interface is implemented, which injects data in a specific format called HepMC from Monte Carlo event generators into the simulation and reconstruction environment of the ALICE experiment, called ``AliRoot''. The interface can both be used in a stand alone version to analyse output from Monte Carlo event generators, or it can be used on the grid to run large scale productions in the ALICE simulation and reconstrunction environment

Evidence against Anomalous Compositions for Giants in the Galactic Nuclear Star Cluster

Very strong Sc I lines have recently been found in cool M giants in the Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC) in the Galactic center. Interpreting these as anomalously high scandium abundances in the Galactic center would imply a unique enhancement signature and chemical evolution history for NSCs, and a potential test for models of chemical enrichment in these objects. We present high resolution K-band spectra (NIRSPEC/Keck II) of cool M giants situated in the solar neighborhood and compare them with spectra of M giants in the NSC. We clearly identify strong Sc I lines in our solar neighborhood sample as well as in the NSC sample. The strong Sc I lines in M giants are therefore not unique to stars in the NSC and we argue that the strong lines are a property of the line formation process that currently escapes accurate theoretical modeling. We further conclude that for giant stars with effective temperatures below approximately 3800 K these Sc I lines should not be used for deriving the scandium abundances in any astrophysical environment until we better understand how these lines are formed. We also discuss the lines of vanadium, titanium, and yttrium identified in the spectra, which demonstrate a similar striking increase in strength below 3500 K effective temperature

Composition of Giants 1° North of the Galactic Center: Detailed Abundance Trends for 21 Elements Observed with IGRINS

We report the first high-resolution, detailed abundances of 21 elements for giants in the Galactic bulge/bar within 1° of the Galactic plane, where high extinction has rendered such studies challenging. Our high-signal-to-noise-ratio and high-resolution, near-infrared spectra of seven M giants in the inner bulge, located at ( l , b ) = (0°, +1°), are observed using the IGRINS spectrograph. We report the first multichemical study of the inner Galactic bulge by investigating, relative to a robust new solar neighborhood sample, the abundance trends of 21 elements, including the relatively difficult to study heavy elements. The elements studied are: F, Mg, Si, S, Ca, Na, Al, K, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, Ce, Nd, and Yb. We investigate bulge membership of all seven stars using distances and orbital simulations, and we find that the most metal-poor star may be a halo interloper. Our investigation also shows that the inner bulge as close as 1° north of the Galactic Center displays a similarity to the inner disk sequence, following the high-[ α /Fe] envelope of the solar vicinity metal-rich population, though no firm conclusions for a different enrichment history are evident from this sample. We find a small fraction of metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] > −0.5), but most of our stars are mainly of supersolar metallicity. Fluorine is found to be enhanced at high metallicity compared to the solar neighborhood, but confirmation with a larger sample is required. We will apply this approach to explore the populations of the nuclear stellar disk and the nuclear star cluster

3D Radiative Transfer for Exoplanet Atmospheres. gCMCRT: A GPU-accelerated MCRT Code

Radiative transfer (RT) is a key component for investigating atmospheres of planetary bodies. With the 3D nature of exoplanet atmospheres being important in giving rise to their observable properties, accurate and fast 3D methods are required to be developed to meet future multidimensional and temporal data sets. We develop an open-source GPU RT code, gCMCRT, a Monte Carlo RT forward model for general use in planetary atmosphere RT problems. We aim to automate the post-processing pipeline, starting from direct global circulation model (GCM) output to synthetic spectra. We develop albedo, emission, and transmission spectra modes for 3D and 1D input structures. We include capability to use correlated-k and high-resolution opacity tables, the latter of which can be Doppler-shifted inside the model. We post-process results from several GCM groups, including ExoRad, SPARC/MITgcm THOR, UK Met Office UM, Exo-FMS, and the Rauscher model. Users can therefore take advantage of desktop and HPC GPU computing solutions. gCMCRT is well suited for post-processing large GCM model grids produced by members of the community and for high-resolution 3D investigations