Abundances for metal-poor stars with accurate parallaxes^*

II. elements in the halo

¹ INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
² Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova, Italy
³ CISAS, Universita' di Padova, Italy

Corresponding author: R. G. Gratton, gratton@pd.astro.it

Received: 17 March 2003
Accepted: 13 May 2003

Abstract

Abundances for elements and Fe in about 150 field subdwarfs and early subgiants with accurate parallaxes and kinematic data are used to discuss the run of abundance ratios in metal-poor stars in the solar neighborhood. Based on kinematics, we separated stars into two populations: the first one has a positive velocity of rotation around the galactic center, and it is likely to be related to the dissipational collapse of the galaxy; the second one has either negligible or negative rotational velocity, and it is likely related to an accretion component. The two populations show a large overlap in metallicity. However, they show distinct chemical properties. For the first population we found that there are close correlations (with small scatters around) of the rotational velocity with metallicity and with the Fe/α abundance ratio: this might be a signature of a not very fast collapse of the progenitor clouds, with enough time for a significant contribution by SNe Ia, although this result needs to be confirmed by a 3-D/non-LTE study. On the other side, the second population exhibits a larger scatter in both the above mentioned relations, and on average, a larger Fe/α ratio at a given metallicity, suggesting a larger scatter in ages. We argue that the lack of stars with moderate rotational velocities and high Fe/α abundance ratios is due to the short merging time for protogalactic clouds with prograde motion, while the presence of a group of counter-rotating stars with this characteristics indicates a much longer typical lifetimes for protogalactic fragments having such a motion. Finally, we found that perigalactic distances correlate with the Fe/α abundance ratios better than the apogalactic distances.