Analysis of the TiO isotopologues in stellar optical spectra
Abstract
This study is based on the use of the new ExoMol TiO rovibronic line lists to identify and model TiO isotopologue features in spectra of M-dwarfs. We aim to investigate problems involving the computation of electronic bands for different isotopologues of TiO by modelling optical spectra of late-type stars and to determine their Ti isotopic abundances, to compare the TiO isotopologues spectra computed using line lists by different authors. We fit theoretical synthetic spectra to the observed stellar molecular bands of TiO. We model spectra of two M-dwarfs: GJ 15A (M1V) and GJ 15B (M3 V) to determine Ti isotopic ratios in their atmospheres. We demonstrate the accuracy of the ExoMol Toto line list for differentisotopologues of TiO and the possibility of determining accurate Ti isotope abundances in a numberof spectral ranges. The 7580--7594 \ spectral range seems particularly useful, with two atomic linesof Fe I and molecular band heads of 50TiO, 49TiO, 48TiO, 47TiO clearly observable in our two M-dwarf spectra. We determine non-solar Ti isotopic ratios of 46Ti : 47Ti : 48Ti : 49Ti : 50Ti = 7.9 : 5.2 : 72.8 : 7.9 :6.2 for GJ 15A and 7.4 : 4.2 : 76.6 : 5.8 : 6.0 for GJ 15B with accuracy of order 0.2. [Ti] = 0.040 and 0.199 within accuracy 0.10 were also determined for GJ 15A and GJ 15B, respectively. We find that the ExoMol Toto TiO line list: a) describes the fine details in line position and intensities of the M-dwarf spectra better than other available TiO line lists; b) correctly reproduces the positions and intensities of the TiO isotopologue band heads observed in M-dwarf spectra; c) can be used to determine Ti isotope abundances in atmospheres of M-stars.