Influence of inelastic collisions with hydrogen atoms on the non-LTE modelling of Ca I and Ca II lines in late-type stars

TL;DR

This study assesses the impact of inelastic hydrogen collisions on NLTE calcium line modeling in late-type stars, demonstrating improved abundance consistency across different lines and stellar types with updated quantum-mechanical data.

Contribution

It introduces updated quantum-mechanical rate coefficients for Ca I + H I collisions into NLTE models, enhancing calcium abundance determinations in late-type stars.

Findings

NLTE reduces line-to-line scatter in calcium abundance measurements.

NLTE removes abundance discrepancies between Ca I and Ca II lines.

Consistent NLTE calcium abundances are achieved in hyper metal-poor stars.

Abstract

We perform the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) calculations for Ca I-II with the updated model atom that includes new quantum-mechanical rate coefficients for Ca I + H I collisions from two recent studies, that is, by Barklem and by Mitrushchenkov, Guitou, Belyaev, Yakovleva, Spielfiedel, and Feautrier, and investigate the accuracy of calcium abundance determinations using the Sun, Procyon, and five metal-poor (MP) stars with well-determined stellar parameters. We show that both collisional recipes lead to very similar NLTE results. When using the subordinate lines of Ca I and the high-excitation lines of Ca II, NLTE provides the smaller line-to-line scatter compared with the LTE case for each star. For Procyon, NLTE removes a steep trend with line strength among strong Ca I lines seen in LTE and leads to consistent [Ca/H] abundances from the two ionisation stages. In the MP stars, the NLTE abundance from Ca II 8498 A agrees well with that from the Ca I subordinate lines. NLTE largely removes abundance discrepancies between the high-excitation lines of Ca I and Ca II 8498 A obtained for our four [Fe/H] < -2 stars under the LTE assumption. We investigate the formation of the Ca I resonance line in the [Fe/H] < -2 stars. Consistent NLTE abundances from the Ca I resonance line and the Ca II lines are found for two hyper metal-poor stars HE0107-5240 and HE1327-2326. We provide the NLTE abundance corrections for 28 lines of Ca I in a grid of model atmospheres suitable for abundance analysis of FGK-type dwarfs and subgiants.