Mg line formation in late-type stellar atmospheres: II. Calculations in a grid of 1D models

TL;DR

This study provides detailed non-LTE calculations for magnesium lines in late-type stellar atmospheres, enabling more accurate elemental abundance determinations by correcting LTE assumptions.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive grid of departure coefficients and equivalent widths for Mg lines in 1D stellar models, including error analysis from atomic collision uncertainties.

Findings

Giants have negative abundance corrections.

Dwarfs have small positive corrections.

Uncertainties in atomic collision data are typically ≤0.03 dex.

Abstract

Mg is the alpha element of choice for Galactic population and chemical evolution studies as it is easily detectable in all late-type stars. Such studies require precise elemental abundances, and thus departures from LTE need to be accounted for. Our goal is to provide reliable departure coefficients and equivalent widths in non-LTE, and for reference in LTE, for diagnostic lines of Mg studied in late-type stars. These can be used e.g., to correct LTE spectra and abundances. Using the model atom built and tested in the preceding paper in this series, we performed non-LTE radiative transfer calculations in a grid of 3945 stellar 1D atmospheric models. We used a sub-grid of 86 models to explore the propagation of errors in the recent atomic collision calculations to the radiative transfer results. We obtained departure coefficients for all the levels and equivalent widths (in LTE and non-LTE) for all the radiative transitions included in the "final" model atom of Osorio et al.. We present and describe our results and show some examples of applications of the data. The errors due to uncertainties in the collisional data are investigated and tabulated. The results for equivalent widths and departure coefficients are made freely available. Giants tend to have negative abundance corrections while dwarfs have positive, though small, corrections. Error analysis results show that uncertainties related to the atomic collision data are typically of order 0.01 dex or less, although for few stellar models in specific lines uncertainties can be as large as 0.03 dex. As these errors are less than or of the same order as typical corrections, we expect that we can use these results to extract Mg abundances from high quality spectra more reliably than from classical LTE analysis.