Chemical abundances of 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS GTO planet search program.Galactic stellar populations and planets

TL;DR

This study analyzes the chemical abundances of 12 elements in 1111 FGK stars from the HARPS GTO program to understand stellar populations and planet hosting characteristics, revealing distinct abundance patterns between different galactic populations and planet hosts.

Contribution

It provides a detailed chemical abundance analysis of a large stellar sample, distinguishing thin and thick disc populations and their relation to planet hosting, using both kinematic and chemical separation methods.

Findings

Chemically separated thin and thick discs are also chemically disjunct for several elements.

Stars hosting giant planets show overabundances in all studied elements.

Stars with Neptunian planets may be detectable around stars with similar metallicities as non-hosts.

Abstract

We performed a uniform and detailed abundance analysis of 12 refractory elements (Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, Ni, Co, Sc, Mn and V) for a sample of 1111 FGK dwarf stars from the HARPS GTO planet search program. 109 of these stars are known to harbour giant planetary companions and 26 stars are hosting exclusively Neptunians and super-Earths. The main goals of this paper are i) to investigate whether there are any differences between the elemental abundance trends for stars of different stellar populations; ii) to characterise the planet host and non-host samples in term of their [X/H]. The extensive study of this sample, focused on the abundance differences between stars with and without planets will be presented in a parallel paper. The equivalent widths of spectral lines are automatically measured from HARPS spectra with the ARES code. The abundances of the chemical elements are determined using a LTE abundance analysis relative to the Sun, with the 2010 revised version of the spectral synthesis code MOOG and a grid of Kurucz ATLAS9 atmospheres. To separate the Galactic stellar populations we applied both a purely kinematical approach and a chemical method. We found that the chemically separated (based on the Mg, Si, and Ti abundances) thin and thick discs are also chemically disjunct for Al, Sc, Co and Ca. Some bifurcation might also exist for Na, V, Ni, and Mn, but there is no clear boundary of their [X/Fe] ratios. We confirm that an overabundance in giant-planet host stars is clear for all the studied elements.We also confirm that stars hosting only Neptunian-like planets may be easier to detect around stars with similar metallicities as non-planet hosts, although for some elements (particulary alpha-elements) the lower limit of [X/H] are very abrupt.