Chemical abundance analysis of symbiotic giants. RW Hya, SY Mus, BX Mon, and AE Ara

Abstract

Symbiotic stars are the long period, binary systems of strongly interacting stars at the final stages of evolution which can be useful tool to understand the chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the formation of stellar populations. Knowledge of the chemical composition of the symbiotic giants is essential to advancing our understanding of these issues but unfortunately reliably determinations exist only in a few cases. We perform a program for detailed chemical composition analysis in over 30 symbiotic giants, based on the high resolution, near-IR spectra, obtained with Phoenix/Gemini South spectrometer. The methods of the standard LTE analysis is used to obtain photospheric abundances of CNO and elements around iron peak. Here we present results obtained for four objects: RW Hya, SY Mus, BX Mon, and AE Ara. Our analysis revealed a significantly sub-solar metallicity (Me/H ~ -0.75) for RW Hya, a slightly sub-solar metallicities (Me/H ~ 0.2-0.3) in BX Mon and AE Ara, and a near-solar metallicity in SY Mus. 12C/13C isotopic ratios are low in all cases, ranging from ~6 to ~10, and indicate that the giants have experienced the first dredge-up.