Fluorine abundances in dwarf stars of the solar neighbourhood

Abstract

Context. In spite of many observational efforts to characterize the chemical evolution of our Galaxy, not much is known about the origin of fluorine (F). Models suggest that the F found in the Galaxy might have been produced mainly in three different ways, namely, Type II supernovae, asymptotic giant branch nucleosynthesis, or in the core of Wolf-Rayet stars. Only a few observational measurements of F abundances are available in the literature and mostly for objects whose characteristics might hamper an accurate determination of fluorine abundance (e.g., complex mixing and nucleosynthesis processes, external/internal contamination). Aims. We acquire data using the high-resolution IR-spectrograph CRIRES and gather FEROS data from the European Southern Observatory archive. The classical method of spectral synthesis in local thermodynamic equilibrium has been used to perform the abundance analysis. Methods. We derive the F abundances of nine cool main-sequence dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood, based on an unblended line of the HF molecule at 2.3 microns. In addition, we study the s-process elements of five of these stars. Results. Several of the analysed stars seem to be slightly fluorine enhanced with respect to the Sun, although no correlation is found between the F abundance and the iron content. In addition, the most fluorine enriched stars are also yttrium and zirconium enriched, which suggests that AGB fluorine nucleosynthesis is the dominant source of fluorine production for the observed stars. Nevertheless, the correlation between [F/Fe] and the s-elements is rather weak and possibly masked by the uncertainties in the F abundance measurements. Finally, we compare our derived F abundances to previous measurements of alpha-element and iron-peak element abundances. Type II core collapse supernovae do not appear to be the main site of F production for our targets, as no correlation seems to exist between the [F/Fe] and the [α/Fe] ratios. © 2012 ESO.