Chemical abundances of the Milky Way thick disk and stellar halo II.: sodium, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements

TL;DR

This study analyzes sodium, iron-peak, and neutron-capture element abundances in 97 old Galactic stars to understand their formation and chemical evolution, revealing similarities at low metallicity and differences at higher metallicity.

Contribution

It extends previous work by analyzing 17 additional elements, providing new insights into the chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way's thick disk and halo components.

Findings

At low metallicity, element ratios are similar across Galactic components.

Differences in [Na/Fe], [Ni/Fe], [Cu/Fe], [Zn/Fe] appear at higher metallicities.

Halo stars show more enhanced [Eu/Fe] ratios than the thick disk.

Abstract

We present chemical abundance analyses of sodium, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements for 97 kinematically selected thick disk, inner halo and outer halo stars with metallicities -3.3<[Fe/H]<-0.5. The main aim of this study is to examine chemical similarities and differences among metal-poor stars belonging to these old Galactic components as a clue to determine their early chemodynamical evolution. In our previous paper, we obtained abundances of alpha elements by performing a one-dimensional LTE abundance analysis based on the high-resolution (R~50000) spectra obtained with the Subaru/HDS. In this paper, a similar analysis is performed to determine abundances of an additional 17 elements. We show that, in metallicities below [Fe/H]~-2, the abundance ratios of many elements in the thick disk, inner halo, and outer halo subsamples are largely similar. In contrast, in higher metallicities ([Fe/H]>-1.5), differences in some of the abundance ratios among the three subsamples are identified. Specifically, the [Na/Fe], [Ni/Fe], [Cu/Fe], and [Zn/Fe] ratios in the inner and outer halo subsamples are found to be lower than those in the thick disk subsample. In contrast to what was observed for [Mg/Fe] in our previous paper, [Eu/Fe] ratios are more enhanced in the two halo subsamples rather than in the thick disk subsample. The observed distinct chemical abundances of some elements between the thick disk and inner/outer halo subsamples with [Fe/H]>-1.5 support the hypothesis that these components formed through different mechanisms. In particular, our results favor the scenario that the inner and outer halo components formed through an assembly of multiple progenitor systems that experienced various degrees of chemical enrichments, while the thick disk formed through rapid star formation with an efficient mixing of chemical elements.