The Open Cluster Chemical Abundances and Mapping Survey: VI. Galactic Chemical Gradient Analysis from APOGEE DR17

TL;DR

This study analyzes APOGEE DR17 data for 150 open clusters to measure detailed Galactic chemical abundance gradients, revealing their variation with radius and age, and confirming consistency with previous high-resolution studies.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive measurement of Galactic chemical gradients for 16 elements using APOGEE DR17 open cluster data, including their evolution over different ages.

Findings

Galactic [Fe/H] gradient of -0.073 dex/kpc between 6 and 11.5 kpc

Significant abundance gradients for multiple elements like O, Mg, S, Ca, Mn, Na, Al, K, Ce

Gradients vary with age, indicating chemical evolution over time.

Abstract

The goal of the Open Cluster Chemical Abundances and Mapping (OCCAM) survey is to constrain key Galactic dynamic and chemical evolution parameters by the construction and analysis of a large, comprehensive, uniform data set of infrared spectra for stars in hundreds of open clusters. This sixth contribution from the OCCAM survey presents analysis of SDSS/APOGEE Data Release 17 (DR17) results for a sample of stars in 150 open clusters, 94 of which we designate to be "high quality'' based on the appearance of their color-magnitude diagram. We find the APOGEE DR17-derived [Fe/H] values to be in good agreement with those from previous high resolution spectroscopic open cluster abundance studies. Using a subset of the high quality sample, the Galactic abundance gradients were measured for 16 chemical elements, including [Fe/H], for both Galactocentric radius ($R_{GC}$) and guiding center radius ($R_{Guide}$). We find an overall Galactic [Fe/H] vs $R_{GC}$ gradient of $-0.073 \pm 0.002$ dex/kpc over the range of $6 < R_{GC} < 11.5$ kpc, and a similar gradient is found for [Fe/H] versus $R_{Guide}$. Significant Galactic abundance gradients are also noted for O, Mg, S, Ca, Mn, Na, Al, K and Ce. Our large sample additionally allows us to explore the evolution of the gradients in four age bins for the remaining 15 elements.