Bibcode
Jönsson, H.; Ryde, N.; Spitoni, E.; Matteucci, F.; Cunha, K.; Smith, V.; Hinkle, K.; Schultheis, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 835, Issue 1, article id. 50, 6 pp. (2017).
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1
2017
Journal
Citations
31
Refereed citations
24
Description
Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are known to produce
“cosmic” fluorine, but it is uncertain whether these stars
are the main producers of fluorine in the solar neighborhood or if any
of the other proposed formation sites, Type II supernovae (SNe II)
and/or Wolf-Rayet (W-R) stars, are more important. Recent articles have
proposed both AGB stars and SNe II as the dominant sources of fluorine
in the solar neighborhood. In this paper we set out to determine the
fluorine abundance in a sample of 49 nearby, bright K giants for which
we previously have determined the stellar parameters, as well as alpha
abundances homogeneously from optical high-resolution spectra. The
fluorine abundance is determined from a 2.3 μm HF molecular line
observed with the spectrometer Phoenix. We compare the fluorine
abundances with those of alpha-elements mainly produced in SNe II and
find that fluorine and the alpha-elements do not evolve in lockstep,
ruling out SNe II as the dominating producers of fluorine in the solar
neighborhood. Furthermore, we find a secondary behavior of fluorine with
respect to oxygen, which is another evidence against the SNe II playing
a large role in the production of fluorine in the solar neighborhood.
This secondary behavior of fluorine will put new constraints on stellar
models of the other two suggested production sites: AGB stars and W-R
stars.