Analysis of 26 Barium Stars I. Abundances

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of 26 barium stars, including dwarf barium stars, providing their atmospheric parameters (Teff, log g, [Fe/H], vt) and elemental abundances. We aim at deriving gravities and luminosity classes of the sample stars, in particular to confirm the existence of dwarf barium stars. Accurate abundances of chemical elements were derived. Abundance ratios between nucleosynthetic processes, by using Eu and Ba as representatives of the r- and s-processes are presented. High-resolution spectra with the FEROS spectrograph at the ESO-1.5m Telescope, and photometric data with Fotrap at the Zeiss telescope at the LNA were obtained. The atmospheric parameters were derived in an iterative way, with temperatures obtained from colour-temperature calibrations. The abundances were derived using spectrum synthesis for Li, Na, Al, alpha-, iron peak, s- and r-elements atomic lines, and C and N molecular lines. Atmospheric parameters in the range 4300 < Teff < 6500, -1.2 < [Fe/H] < 0.0 and 1.4 < log g < 4.6 were derived, confirming that our sample contains giants, subgiants and dwarfs. The abundance results obtained for Li, Al, Na, alpha- and iron peak elements for the sample stars show that they are compatible with the values found in the literature for normal disk stars in the same range of metallicities. Enhancements of C, N and heavy elements relative to Fe, that characterise barium stars, were derived and showed that [X/Ba] vs. [Ba/H] and [X/Ba] vs. [Fe/H] present different behaviour as compared to [X/Eu] vs. [Eu/H] and [X/Eu] vs. [Fe/H], reflecting the different nucleosynthetic sites for the s- and r-processes.