Mn abundances in the stars of the Galactic disc with metallicities -1.0 < [Fe/H] < 0.3

TL;DR

This study measures manganese abundances in 247 stars of the Galactic disc to understand their chemical evolution, confirming thermonuclear supernovae as the main source of Mn and Fe, and highlighting uncertainties in supernova nucleosynthesis models.

Contribution

First detailed Mn abundance analysis in a large sample of Galactic disc stars across a broad metallicity range, clarifying their chemical evolution and supernova contributions.

Findings

[Mn/Fe] increases with metallicity, consistent with previous data.

Thermonuclear supernovae dominate Mn and Fe production in the Galactic disc.

Uncertainties in supernova nucleosynthesis limit precise constraints on progenitor populations.

Abstract

In this work we present and discuss the observations of the Mn abundances for 247 FGK dwarfs, located in the Galactic disc with metallicity -1<Fe/H]<+0.3. The observed stars belong to the substructures of the Galaxy thick and thin discs, and to the Hercules stream. The observations were conducted using the 1.93 m telescope at Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP, France) equipped with the echelle type spectrographs ELODIE and SOPHIE. The abundances were derived under the LTE approximation, with an average error for the [Mn/Fe] ratio of 0.10 dex. For most of the stars in the sample Mn abundances are not available in the literature. We obtain an evolution of [Mn/Fe] ratio with the metallicity [Fe/H] consistent with previous data compilations. In particular, within the metallicity range covered by our stellar sample the [Mn/Fe] ratio is increasing with the increase of metallicity. This due to the contribution to the Galactic chemical evolution of Mn and Fe from thermonuclear supernovae. We confirm the baseline scenario where most of the Mn in the Galactic disc and in the Sun is made by thermonuclear supernovae. In particular, the effective contribution from core-collapse supernovae to the Mn in the Solar system is about 10-20%. However, present uncertainties affecting the production of Mn and Fe in thermonuclear supernovae are limiting the constraining power of the observed [Mn/Fe] trend in the Galactic discs on, e.g., the frequency of different thermonuclear supernovae populations. The different production of these two elements in different types of thermonuclear supernovae needs to be disentangled by the dependence of their relative production on the metallicity of the supernova progenitor.