Lithium in the lower red giant branch of 5 Galactic globular clusters
Claudia Aguilera-G\'omez, Lorenzo Monaco, Alessio Mucciarelli,, Maurizio Salaris, Sandro Villanova, Elena Pancino

TL;DR
This study measures lithium abundances in lower red giant branch stars across five globular clusters, revealing a consistent lithium plateau and identifying a Li-rich giant, which informs stellar evolution and cosmology.
Contribution
It provides new measurements of lithium in globular clusters' lower red giants, confirming the lithium plateau and discovering a Li-rich giant, enhancing understanding of stellar and cosmological lithium.
Findings
Lithium abundance forms a plateau from 0.84 to 1.03 dex across clusters.
Primordial lithium values are consistent with the Spite plateau at 2.1-2.3 dex.
No difference in lithium between first and second population stars.
Abstract
Lithium is one of the few elements produced during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis in the early universe. Moreover, its fragility makes it useful as a proxy for stellar environmental conditions. As such, the lithium abundance in old systems is at the core of different astrophysical problems. Stars in the lower red giant branch allow studying globular clusters where main sequence stars are too faint to be observed. We use these stars to analyze the initial Li content of the clusters and compare it to cosmological predictions, to measure spreads in Li between different stellar populations, and to study signs of extra depletion in these giants. We use GIRAFFE spectra to measure the lithium and sodium abundances of lower red giant branch stars in 5 globular clusters. These cover an extensive range in metallicity, from [Fe/H] to [Fe/H] dex. We find that the lithium abundance…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsStellar, planetary, and galactic studies
