Spectral Calibration of K$-$M Giants from medium resolution near-infrared HK-band spectra

Abstract

We present here new medium resolution spectra ($\lambda/\Delta\lambda$ $\sim$ 1200) of K$-$M giants covering wavelength range 1.50$-$1.80 and 1.95$-$2.45 $\mu$m. The sample includes 72 K0$-$M8 giants from our TIRSPEC observations and all available 35 giants in that spectral range from archival IRTF spectral library. We have calibrated here the empirical relations between fundamental parameters (e.g., effective temperature, surface gravity) and equivalent widths of some important spectral features like Si I, Na I, Ca I, $^{12}$CO. We find that the $^{12}$CO first overtone band at 2.29 $\mu$m and second overtone band at 1.62 $\mu$m are a reasonably good indicator of temperature above 3400 K and surface gravity. We show that the dispersion of empirical relations between $^{12}$CO and $T_{eff}$ significantly improve considering the effect of surface gravity.