Abundances of refractory elements in the atmospheres of stars with extrasolar planets

¹ Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
² Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain e-mail: gil@iac.es
³ Centro de Astronomia e Astrofísica da Universidade de Lisboa, Observatório Astronómico de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-018 Lisboa, Portugal
⁴ Observatoire de Genève, 51 ch. des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland

Received: 18 July 2005
Accepted: 6 December 2005

Abstract

Aims.This work presents a uniform and homogeneous study of chemical abundances of refractory elements in 101 stars with and 93 without known planetary companions. We carry out an in-depth investigation of the abundances of Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Na, Mg and Al. The new comparison sample, spanning the metallicity range FeH, fills the gap that previously existed, mainly at high metallicities, in the number of stars without known planets.Methods.We used an enlarged set of data including new observations, especially for the field “single” comparison stars . The line list previously studied by other authors was improved: on average we analysed 90 spectral lines in every spectrum and carefully measured more than 16 600 equivalent widths (EW) to calculate the abundances.Results.We investigate possible differences between the chemical abundances of the two groups of stars, both with and without planets. The results are globally comparable to those obtained by other authors, and in most cases the abundance trends of planet-host stars are very similar to those of the comparison sample. Conclusions.This work represents a step towards the comprehension of recently discovered planetary systems. These results could also be useful for verifying galactic models at high metallicities and consequently improve our knowledge of stellar nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution.