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Atomic Data Needs in Astrophysics: The Galactic Center “Scandium Mystery”

Thorsbro, Brian LU orcid (2020) In Atoms 8(1).
Abstract
Investigating the Galactic center offers unique insights into the buildup and history of our Galaxy and is a stepping stone to understand galaxies in a larger context. It is reasonable to expect that the stars found in the Galactic center might have a different composition compared to stars found in the local neighborhood around the Sun. It is therefore quite exciting when recently there were reports of unusual neutral scandium, yttrium, and vanadium abundances found in the Galactic center stars, compared to local neighborhood stars. To explain the scandium abundances in the Galactic center, we turn to recent laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations done on the atomic oscillator strengths of neutral scandium lines in the near... (More)
Investigating the Galactic center offers unique insights into the buildup and history of our Galaxy and is a stepping stone to understand galaxies in a larger context. It is reasonable to expect that the stars found in the Galactic center might have a different composition compared to stars found in the local neighborhood around the Sun. It is therefore quite exciting when recently there were reports of unusual neutral scandium, yttrium, and vanadium abundances found in the Galactic center stars, compared to local neighborhood stars. To explain the scandium abundances in the Galactic center, we turn to recent laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations done on the atomic oscillator strengths of neutral scandium lines in the near infrared. We combine these with measurements of the hyper fine splitting of neutral scandium. We show how these results can be used to explain the reported unusual scandium abundances and conclude that in this respect, the environment of the Galactic center is not that different from the environment in the local neighborhood around the sun. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Galactic center, Stellar abundances, Scandium, Hyper fine splitting
in
Atoms
volume
8
issue
1
article number
4
pages
7 pages
publisher
MDPI AG
ISSN
2218-2004
DOI
10.3390/atoms8010004
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
696b3e35-1e6e-4552-a1de-d07a2d8f8b96
date added to LUP
2021-03-11 10:58:22
date last changed
2021-03-16 02:27:07
@article{696b3e35-1e6e-4552-a1de-d07a2d8f8b96,
  abstract     = {{Investigating the Galactic center offers unique insights into the buildup and history of our Galaxy and is a stepping stone to understand galaxies in a larger context. It is reasonable to expect that the stars found in the Galactic center might have a different composition compared to stars found in the local neighborhood around the Sun. It is therefore quite exciting when recently there were reports of unusual neutral scandium, yttrium, and vanadium abundances found in the Galactic center stars, compared to local neighborhood stars. To explain the scandium abundances in the Galactic center, we turn to recent laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations done on the atomic oscillator strengths of neutral scandium lines in the near infrared. We combine these with measurements of the hyper fine splitting of neutral scandium. We show how these results can be used to explain the reported unusual scandium abundances and conclude that in this respect, the environment of the Galactic center is not that different from the environment in the local neighborhood around the sun.}},
  author       = {{Thorsbro, Brian}},
  issn         = {{2218-2004}},
  keywords     = {{Galactic center; Stellar abundances; Scandium; Hyper fine splitting}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{1}},
  publisher    = {{MDPI AG}},
  series       = {{Atoms}},
  title        = {{Atomic Data Needs in Astrophysics: The Galactic Center “Scandium Mystery”}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atoms8010004}},
  doi          = {{10.3390/atoms8010004}},
  volume       = {{8}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}