Formation of Al II lines and photospheric aluminium abundances in B-type stars

TL;DR

This study investigates aluminium abundances in B-type stars using non-LTE spectral line analysis to infer galactic gas composition and examines the reliability of different AlII lines for abundance determination.

Contribution

It provides a detailed non-LTE analysis of AlII lines at 6243 and 4663A, highlighting the more reliable 4663A line for abundance measurements in B-type stars.

Findings

AlII 4663A line yields consistent solar-like Al abundances across 10,000-20,000K.

Non-LTE corrections for 6243A are insufficient, especially at higher Teff.

HgMn stars show significant Al deficiency compared to the Sun.

Abstract

Aluminium abundances of B-type stars were spectroscopically determined in order to get information about the galactic gas composition at the time of their formation. For this purpose, two AlII lines at 6243 and 4663A were employed. The non-LTE effect of these AlII lines generally acts in the direction of weakening (i.e., profile becomes shallower) caused by a decrease of line opacity (due to overionization) along with an enhanced line source function (overexcitation), and this effect tends to become progressively larger with an increase in Teff as well as with a decrease in log g (surface gravity). Regarding the AlII 6243 line, while the non-LTE calculation qualitatively reproduces its overall behavior (e.g., transition from absorption to emission at early B-type), some Teff-dependent systematic trend remains unremoved in the non-LTE abundances of normal stars, which means that non-LTE corrections evaluated for this line are quantitatively insufficient. Meanwhile, for the case of the Al II 4663 line, which is more advantageous than the 6243 line in the sense that it is stronger without showing any emission, the resulting non-LTE abundances of ordinary B stars are almost constant at the solar abundance (A~6.5) over the wide Teff range (~10000-20000K), suggesting that the abundances derived from this line are successfully non-LTE-corrected and trustable. Therefore, according to the results from the AlII 4663 line, we may conclude that the Al abundance of the galactic gas in the recent past (several times ~10^7-10^8 yr ago) is almost consistent with the solar composition. As to the Al abundances of HgMn stars (Teff<15000K), our analysis confirmed that this element is conspicuously deficient (by ~0.5-2 dex in comparison with the Sun) in the photosphere of these chemically peculiar stars, as already reported in previous studies.