Photospheric and coronal abundances in solar-type stars: the peculiar case of Tau Bootis

TL;DR

This study investigates the chemical composition of Tau Bootis, a planet-hosting star, by comparing its coronal and photospheric abundances using X-ray and optical spectra, revealing peculiar abundance patterns possibly linked to its metallicity.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed, line-based analysis of coronal abundances in Tau Bootis, comparing them with photospheric data and other stars, highlighting its unique abundance ratios.

Findings

Coronal abundances are systematically lower than photospheric for most elements.

The Ni abundance in the corona matches the photospheric value, unlike other elements.

Tau Bootis shows peculiar abundance ratios compared to similar stars.

Abstract

Chemical abundances in solar-type stars are a much debated topic. Planet-hosting stars are known to be metal-rich, but whether or not this peculiarity applies also to the chemical composition of the outer stellar atmospheres is still to be clarified. More in general, coronal and photospheric abundances in late-type stars appear to be different in many cases, but understanding how chemical stratification effects work in stellar atmospheres requires an observational base larger than currently available. We obtained XMM-Newton high-resolution X-ray spectra of Tau Bootis, a well known nearby star with a Jovian-mass close-in planet. We analyzed these data with the aim to perform a detailed line-based emission measure analysis and derive the abundances of individual elements in the corona with two different methods applied independently. We compared the coronal abundances of Tau Bootis with published photospheric abundances based on high-resolution optical spectra and with those of other late-type stars with different magnetic activity levels, including the Sun. We find that the two methods provide consistent results within the statistical uncertainties for both the emission measure distribution of the hot plasma and for the coronal abundances, with discrepancies at the 2-sigma level limited to the amount of plasma at temperatures of 3-4 MK and to the O and Ni abundances. In both cases, the elements for which both coronal and photospheric measurements are available (C, N, O, Si, Fe, and Ni) result systematically less abundant in the corona by a factor 3 or more, with the exception of the coronal Ni abundance, which is similar to the photospheric value. Comparison with other late-type stars of similar activity level shows that these coronal/photospheric abundance ratios are peculiar to Tau Bootis and possibly related to the characteristic over-metallicity of this planet-hosting star.