Galactic evolution of nitrogen

Abstract

We present detailed spectroscopic analysis of nitrogen abundances in 31 unevolved metal-poor stars analysed by spectral synthesis of the near-UV NH band at 3360 Å observed at high resolution with various telescopes. We found that [N/Fe] scales with that of iron in the metallicity range -3.1 < 0 with the slope 0.01 ± 0.02. Furthermore, we derive uniform and accurate (N/O) ratios using oxygen abundances from near-UV OH lines obtained in our previous studies. We find that a primary component of nitrogen is required to explain the observations. The NH lines are discovered in the VLT/UVES spectra of the very metal-poor subdwarfs G64-12 and LP815-43 indicating that these stars are N rich. The results are compared with theoretical models and observations of extragalactic H II regions and Damped Lyα systems. This is the first direct comparison of the (N/O) ratios in these objects with those in Galactic stars.