Spectroscopic stellar parameters for 582 FGK stars in the HARPS volume-limited sample

Revising the metallicity-planet correlation^⋆

¹ Centro de Astrofísica, Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugal
e-mail: sousasag@astro.up.pt
² Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³ Geneva Observatory, Geneva University, 51 Ch. des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland
⁴ Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
⁵ Departamento de Astrofisica, Universidade de La Laguna, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Received: 14 July 2011
Accepted: 28 July 2011

Abstract

To understand the formation and evolution of solar-type stars and planets in the solar neighborhood, we need to obtain their stellar parameters with high precision. We present a catalog of precise stellar parameters for low-activity FGK single stars in a volume-limited sample followed by the HARPS spectrograph in the quest to identify extra-solar planets. The spectroscopic analysis was completed assuming LTE with a grid of Kurucz atmosphere models and using the ARES code to perform an automatic measurement of the line equivalent widths. The results are compared with different independent methods and also with other values found in the literature for common stars. Both comparisons are consistent and illustrate the homogeneity of the parameters derived by our team. The derived metallicities of this sample reveal a somewhat different distribution for the present planet hosts, but still indicates the already known higher frequency of planets observed for the more metal-rich stars. We combine the results derived in this sample with the one from the CORALIE survey to present the largest homogeneous spectroscopic study of the metallicity-giant-planet relation using a total of 1830 stars.