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Chaboyer, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Chaboyer, B..

Milky Way archaeology using RR Lyrae and type II Cepheids: II. High-velocity RR Lyrae stars and Milky Way mass

We report the discovery of high-velocity candidates among RR Lyrae stars found in the Milky Way halo. We identified nine RR Lyrae stars with Galactocentric velocities exceeding the local escape velocity based on the assumed Galaxy potential. Furthermore, based on a close examination of their orbits’, we ruled out their ejection location in the Milky Way disk and bulge. The spatial distribution revealed that seven out of nine pulsators overlap with the position of the Sagittarius stellar stream. Two out of these seven RR Lyrae stars can be tentatively linked to the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy on the basis of their orbits. Focusing on the high-velocity tail of the RR Lyrae velocity distribution, we estimated the escape velocity in the Solar neighborhood to be v esc = 512$_{-37}^{+94}$ km s -1 (4 to 12 kpc); and beyond the Solar neighborhood as v esc = 436$_{-22}^{+44}$ km s -1 and v esc = 393$_{-26}^{+53}$ km s -1 (for distances between 12 to 20 kpc and 20 to 28 kpc), respectively. We utilized three escape velocity estimates together with the local circular velocity to estimate the Milky Way mass. The resulting measurement M 200 = 0.83$_{-0.16}^{+0.29}$ x 10 12 M ⊙ falls on the lower end of the current Milky Way mass estimates, but once corrected for the likely bias in the escape velocity (an increase of approximately 10% in terms of the escape velocity), our mass estimate yields M 200 = 1.26$_{-0.22}^{+0.40}$ x 10 12 M ⊙ which is in agreement with estimates based on different diagnostics of the Milky Way (MW) mass. The MW mass of within 20 kpc then corresponds to M MW (r , 20 kpc) = 1.9$_{-0.1}^{+0.2}$ x 10 11 M ⊙ without any correction for bias, and M MW (r , 20 kpc) = 2.1$_{-0.1}^{+0.2}$ x 10 11 M ⊙ corrected for a likely offset in escape velocities.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

On the Use of Field RR Lyrae As Galactic Probes: IV. New Insights Into and Around the Oosterhoff Dichotomy

We discuss the largest and most homogeneous spectroscopic data set of field RR Lyrae variables (RRLs) available to date. We estimated abundances using both high-resolution and low-resolution ($Δ$S method) spectra for fundamental (RRab) and first overtone (RRc) RRLs. The iron abundances for 7941 RRLs were supplemented with similar estimates that are available in the literature, ending up with 9015 RRLs (6150 RRab, 2865 RRc). The metallicity distribution shows a mean value of $\langle$[Fe/H]$\rangle$ = -1.51 ± 0.01, and $σ$(standard deviation) = 0.41 dex with a long metal-poor tail approaching [Fe/H] ≃ - 3 and a sharp metal-rich tail approaching solar iron abundance. The RRab variables are more metal-rich ( $\langle$[Fe/H]$\rangle$ ab = -1.48 ± 0.01, $σ$ = 0.41 dex) than RRc variables ($\langle$[Fe/H]$\rangle$ c = -1.58 ± 0.01, $σ$ = 0.40 dex). The relative fraction of RRab variables in the Bailey diagram (visual amplitude versus period) located along the short-period (more metal-rich) and the long-period (more metalpoor) sequences are 80% and 20%, while RRc variables display an opposite trend, namely 30% and 70%, respectively. We found that the pulsation period of both RRab and RRc variables steadily decreases when moving from the metal-poor to the metal-rich regime. Furthermore, the visual amplitude shows the same trend, but RRc amplitudes are almost two times more sensitive than RRab amplitudes to metallicity. We also investigated the dependence of the population ratio (N $c$ /N tot ) of field RRLs on the metallicity and we found that the distribution is more complex than in globular clusters. The population ratio steadily increases from ~0.25 to ~0.36 in the metal-poor regime, it decreases from ~0.36 to ~0.18 for -1.8 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ -0.9 and it increases to a value of ~0.3 approaching solar iron abundance.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

On the Use of Field RR Lyrae as Galactic Probes. V. Optical and Radial Velocity Curve Templates

We collected the largest spectroscopic catalog of RR Lyrae (RRLs) including ≈20,000 high-, medium-, and low-resolution spectra for ≈10,000 RRLs. We provide the analytical forms of radial velocity curve (RVC) templates. These were built using 36 RRLs (31 fundamental—split into three period bins—and five first-overtone pulsators) with well-sampled RVCs based on three groups of metallic lines (Fe, Mg, Na) and four Balmer lines (H$α$, H$β$, H$γ$, H$δ$). We tackled the long-standing problem of the reference epoch to anchor light-curve and RVC templates. For the V-band, we found that the residuals of the templates anchored to the phase of the mean magnitude along the rising branch are ~35% to ~45% smaller than those anchored to the phase of maximum light. For the RVC, we used two independent reference epochs for metallic and Balmer lines and we verified that the residuals of the RVC templates anchored to the phase of mean RV are from 30% (metallic lines) up to 45% (Balmer lines) smaller than those anchored to the phase of minimum RV. We validated our RVC templates by using both the single-point and the three phase point approaches. We found that barycentric velocities based on our RVC templates are two to three times more accurate than those available in the literature. We applied the current RVC templates to Balmer lines RVs of RRLs in the globular NGC 3201 collected with MUSE at VLT. We found the cluster barycentric RV of $V$$γ$ = 496.89 ± 8.37(error) ± 3.43 (standard deviation) km s -1 , which agrees well with literature estimates.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Stellar models with microscopic diffusion and rotational mixing. 2: Application to open clusters

Stellar models with masses ranging from 05.5 to 1.3 solar mass were constructed for comparison with young cluster observations of Li and of rotation velocities. The amount of Li depletion in cool stars is sensitive to the amount of overshoot at the base of the surface convection zone, and the exact metallicity of the models. Even when this is taken into account, the Li observations are a severe constraint for the models and rule out standard models and pure diffusion models. Stellar models which include diffusion and rotational mixing in the radiative regions of stars are able to simultaneously match the Li abundances observed in the Pleiades, the UMa Group, The Hyades, Praesepe, NGC 752, and M67. They also match the observed rotation periods in the Hyades. However, these models are unable to simultaneously explain the presence of the rapidly rotating late G and K stars in the Pleiades and the absence of rapidly rotating late F and early G stars.

Chaboyer, B.↗