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From stellar spectra, a variety of physical properties of stars can be derived. In particular, the chemical composition of stellar atmospheres can be inferred from absorption line analyses. These provide key information on large scales, such as the formation of our Galaxy, down to the small-scale nucleosynthesis processes that take place in stars and supernovae. By extending the observed wavelength range toward bluer wavelengths, we optimize such studies to also include critical absorption lines in metal-poor stars, and allow for studies of heavy elements (Z = 38) whose formation processes remain poorly constrained. In this context, spectrographs optimized for observing blue wavelength ranges are essential, since many absorption lines at redder wavelengths are too weak to be detected in metal-poor stars. This means that some elements cannot be studied in the visual-redder regions, and important scientific tracers and science cases are lost. The present era of large public surveys will target millions of stars. It is therefore important that the next generation of spectrographs are designed such that they cover a wide wavelength range and can observe a large number of stars simultaneously. Only then, we can gain the full information from stellar spectra, from both metal-poor to metal-rich ones, that will allow us to understand the aforementioned formation scenarios in greater detail. Here we describe the requirements driving the design of the forthcoming survey instrument 4MOST, a multi-object spectrograph commissioned for the ESO VISTA 4 m-telescope. While 4MOST is also intended for studies of active galactic nuclei, baryonic acoustic oscillations, weak lensing, cosmological constants, supernovae and other transients, we focus here on high-density, wide-area survey of stars and the science that can be achieved with high-resolution stellar spectroscopy. Scientific and technical requirements that governed the design are described along with a thorough line blending analysis. For the high-resolution spectrograph, we find that a sampling of >= 2.5 (pixels per resolving element), spectral resolution of 18 000 or higher, and a wavelength range covering 393-436 nm, is the most well-balanced solution for the instrument. A spectrograph with these characteristics will enable accurate abundance analysis (+/- 0.1 dex) in the blue and allow us to confront the outlined scientific questions. (C) 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH& Co. KGaA, Weinheim (Less)

We determine Mg abundances in 6 Gaia benchmark stars using theoretical one-dimensional (1D) hydrostatic model atmospheres, as well as temporally- and spatially-averaged 3D model atmospheres (). The stars cover a range of Teff from 4700 to 6500 K, log g from 1.6 to 4.4 dex, and [Fe/H] from -3.0 dex to solar. Spectrum synthesis calculations are performed in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) and in non-LTE (NLTE) using the oscillator strengths recently published by Pehlivan Rhodin et al. We find that: a) Mg abundances determined from the infrared spectra are as accurate as the optical diagnostics, b) the NLTE effects on Mg I line strengths and abundances in this sample of stars are minor (although for a few Mg I lines the NLTE effects on abundance exceed 0.6 dex in and 0.1 dex in 1D, c) the solar Mg abundance is 7.56 +/- 0.05 dex (total error), in the excellent agreement with the Mg abundance measured in CI chondritic meteorites, d) the 1D NLTE and NLTE approach can be used with confidence to analyse optical Mg I lines in spectra of dwarfs and sub-giants, but for red giants the Mg I 5711 A line should be preferred, e) low-excitation Mg I lines are sensitive to the atmospheric structure; for these lines, LTE calculations with models lead to significant systematic abundance errors. The methods developed in this work will be used to study Mg abundances of a large sample of stars in the next paper in the series., 25 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ

We present stellar parameters, stellar ages, and detailed elemental abundances for Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe, and Ni for 32 solar sibling candidates. Technique of chemical tagging gives us a high probability that four stars might be from the same open cluster. Only one candidate HIP 40317 which has solar metallicity and age could be a solar sibling. We performed simulations of the Sun's birth cluster in analytical Galactic model and found that there is quite low probability to find solar siblings with radial velocity up to Vr = 34.2 km s−1 .

For studies of Galactic evolution, the accurate characterization of stars in terms of their evolutionary stage and population membership is of fundamental importance. A standard approach relies on extracting this information from stellar evolution models but requires the effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity of a star obtained by independent means. In previous work, we determined accurate effective temperatures and non-LTE logg and [Fe/H] (NLTE-Opt) for a large sample of metal-poor stars, -3, Comment: 13 pages and 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Milky Way is expected to host an accreted disc of stars and dark matter. This forms as massive >1:10 mergers are preferentially dragged towards the disc plane by dynamical friction and then tidally shredded. The accreted disc likely contributes only a tiny fraction of the Milky Way's thin and thick stellar disc. However, it is interesting because: (i) its associated `dark disc' has important implications for experiments hoping to detect a dark matter particle in the laboratory; and (ii) the presence or absence of such a disc constrains the merger history of our Galaxy. In this work, we develop a chemo-dynamical template to hunt for the accreted disc. We apply our template to the high-resolution spectroscopic sample from Ruchti et al. (2011), finding at present no evidence for accreted stars. Our results are consistent with a quiescent Milky Way with no >1:10 mergers since the disc formed and a correspondingly light `dark disc'. However, we caution that while our method can robustly identify accreted stars, our incomplete stellar sample makes it more challenging to definitively rule them out. Larger unbiased stellar samples will be required for this., 14 pages; 8 figures; 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Gaia-ESO Survey is obtaining high-quality spectroscopic data for about 10^5 stars using FLAMES at the VLT. UVES high-resolution spectra are being collected for about 5000 FGK-type stars. These UVES spectra are analyzed in parallel by several state-of-the-art methodologies. Our aim is to present how these analyses were implemented, to discuss their results, and to describe how a final recommended parameter scale is defined. We also discuss the precision (method-to-method dispersion) and accuracy (biases with respect to the reference values) of the final parameters. These results are part of the Gaia-ESO 2nd internal release and will be part of its 1st public release of advanced data products. The final parameter scale is tied to the one defined by the Gaia benchmark stars, a set of stars with fundamental atmospheric parameters. A set of open and globular clusters is used to evaluate the physical soundness of the results. Each methodology is judged against the benchmark stars to define weights in three different regions of the parameter space. The final recommended results are the weighted-medians of those from the individual methods. The recommended results successfully reproduce the benchmark stars atmospheric parameters and the expected Teff-log g relation of the calibrating clusters. Atmospheric parameters and abundances have been determined for 1301 FGK-type stars observed with UVES. The median of the method-to-method dispersion of the atmospheric parameters is 55 K for Teff, 0.13 dex for log g, and 0.07 dex for [Fe/H]. Systematic biases are estimated to be between 50-100 K for Teff, 0.10-0.25 dex for log g, and 0.05-0.10 dex for [Fe/H]. Abundances for 24 elements were derived: C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, Zr, Mo, Ba, Nd, and Eu. The typical method-to-method dispersion of the abundances varies between 0.10 and 0.20 dex., Comment: 39 pages, A&A accepted

Red giant stars are perhaps the most important type of stars for Galactic and extra-galactic archaeology: they are luminous, occur in all stellar populations, and their surface temperatures allow precise abundance determinations for many different chemical elements. Yet, the full star formation and enrichment history of a galaxy can be traced directly only if two key observables can be determined for large stellar samples - age and chemical composition. While spectroscopy is a powerful method to analyse the detailed abundances of stars, stellar ages are the "missing link in the chain", since they are not a direct observable. However, spectroscopy should be able to estimate stellar masses, which for red giants directly infer ages provided their chemical composition is known. Here we establish a new empirical relation between the shape of the hydrogen line in the observed spectra of red giants and stellar mass determined from asteroseismology. The relation allows to determine stellar masses and ages with the accuracy of 10-15%. The method can be used with confidence for stars in the following range of stellar parameters: 4000 < Teff < 5000 K, 0.5 < log g < 3.5, -2.0 < [Fe/H] < 0.3, and luminosities log L/LSun < 2.5. Our analysis provides observational evidence that the Halpha spectral characteristics of red giant stars are tightly correlated with their mass and therefore their age. We also show that the method samples well all stellar populations with ages above 1 Gyr. Targeting bright giants, the method allows to obtain simultaneous age and chemical abundance information far deeper than would be possible with asteroseismology, extending the possible survey volume to remote regions of the Milky Way and even to neighbouring galaxies like Andromeda or the Magellanic Clouds already with present instrumentation, like VLT and Keck facilities., 18 pages, accepted for publication in A&A

A common approach to determining distances to stars without astrometric information is to compare stellar evolution models with parameters obtained from spectroscopic techniques. This method is routinely applied in the context of large-scale stellar surveys out to distances of several kpc. However, systematic errors may arise because of inaccurate spectroscopic parameters. We explore the effects of non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) on the determination of surface gravities and metallicities for a large sample of metal-poor stars within approximately 10 kpc of the Sun. Using the improved Teff scale, we then show that stellar parameters estimated based on the widely used method of 1D LTE excitation-ionization balance of Fe results in distances which are systematically in error. For metal-poor giants, [Fe/H] ~ −2 dex, the distances can be overestimated by up to 70%. We compare the results with those from the Radial Velocity Experiment Survey catalogue (rave) for the stars in common, and find similar offsets.

Very metal-poor stars are of obvious importance for many problems in chemical evolution, star formation, and galaxy evolution. Finding complete samples of such stars which are also bright enough to allow high-precision individual analyses is of considerable interest. We demonstrate here that stars with iron abundances [Fe/H] < -2 dex, and down to below -4 dex, can be efficiently identified within the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) survey of bright stars, without requiring additional confirmatory observations. We determine a calibration of the equivalent width of the Calcium triplet lines measured from the RAVE spectra onto true [Fe/H], using high spectral resolution data for a subset of the stars. These RAVE iron abundances are accurate enough to obviate the need for confirmatory higher-resolution spectroscopy. Our initial study has identified 631 stars with [Fe/H], Accepted by ApJL, Postscript file of 15 pages, 3 figures

We present the second data release of the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE), an ambitious spectroscopic survey to measure radial velocities (RVs) and stellar atmosphere parameters of up to one million stars using the 6dF multi-object spectrograph on the 1.2-m UK Schmidt Telescope of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO). It is obtaining medium resolution spectra (median R=7,500) in the Ca-triplet region (8,410--8,795 \AA) for southern hemisphere stars in the magnitude range 9, Comment: 85 pages, 23 figures, 14 tables, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal

According to our current cosmological model, galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to experience many mergers over their lifetimes. The most massive of the merging galaxies will be dragged towards the disc-plane, depositing stars and dark matter into an accreted disc structure. In this work, we utilize the chemo-dynamical template developed in Ruchti et al. to hunt for accreted stars. We apply the template to a sample of 4,675 stars in the third internal data release from the Gaia-ESO Spectroscopic Survey. We find a significant component of accreted halo stars, but find no evidence of an accreted disc component. This suggests that the Milky Way has had a rather quiescent merger history since its disc formed some 8-10 billion years ago and therefore possesses no significant dark matter disc., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

A small fraction of the halo field is made up of stars that share the light element (Z, 4 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

Understanding the history and the evolution of the Milky Way disc is one of the main goals of modern astrophysics. We study the velocity dispersion behaviour of Galactic disc stars as a function of the [Mg/Fe] ratio, which can be used as a proxy of relative age. This key relation is essential to constrain the formation mechanisms of the disc stellar populations as well as the cooling processes. We used the recommended parameters and chemical abundances of 7800 FGK Milky Way field stars from the second internal data release of the Gaia-ESO Survey. These stars were observed with the GIRAFFE spectrograph, and cover a large spatial volume (6+0.2dex. First, the velocity dispersion increases with [Mg/Fe] at all [Fe/H] ratios for the thin-disc stars, and then it decreases for the thick-disc at the highest [Mg/Fe] abundances. Similar trends are observed within the errors for the azimuthal velocity dispersion, while a continuous increase with [Mg/Fe] is observed for the vertical velocity dispersion. The velocity dispersion decrease agrees with previous measurements of the RAVE survey, although it is observed here for a greater metallicity interval and a larger spatial volume. We confirm the existence of [Mg/Fe]-rich thick-disc stars with cool kinematics in the generally turbulent context of the primitive Galactic disc. This is discussed in the framework of the different disc formation scenarios., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, A&A accepted

We present preliminary results on modelling KIC 7693833, the so far most metal-poor red-giant star observed by {\it Kepler}. From time series spanning several months, global oscillation parameters and individual frequencies were obtained and compared to theoretical calculations. Evolution models are calculated taking into account spectroscopic and asteroseismic constraints. The oscillation frequencies of the models were computed and compared to the {\it Kepler} data. In the range of mass computed, there is no preferred model, giving an uncertainty of about 30 K in $T_eff$, 0.02 dex in $\log g$, $0.7 \,R_\odot$ in radius and of about 2.5 Gyr in age.

From exploratory studies and theoretical expectations it is known that simplifying approximations in spectroscopic analysis (LTE, 1D) lead to systematic biases of stellar parameters and abundances. These biases depend strongly on surface gravity, temperature, and, in particular, for LTE vs. non-LTE (NLTE) on metallicity of the stars. Here we analyse the [Mg/Fe] and [Fe/H] plane of a sample of 326 stars, comparing LTE and NLTE results obtained using 1D hydrostatic models and averaged models. We show that compared to the NLTE benchmark, all other three methods display increasing biases towards lower metallicities, resulting in false trends of [Mg/Fe] against [Fe/H], which have profound implications for interpretations by chemical evolution models. In our best NLTE model, the halo and disc stars show a clearer behaviour in the [Mg/Fe] - [Fe/H] plane, from the knee in abundance space down to the lowest metallicities. Our sample has a large fraction of thick disc stars and this population extends down to at least [Fe/H] ~ -1.6 dex, further than previously proven. The thick disc stars display a constant [Mg/Fe] ~ 0.3 dex, with a small intrinsic dispersion in [Mg/Fe] that suggests that a fast SN Ia channel is not relevant for the disc formation. The halo stars reach higher [Mg/Fe] ratios and display a net trend of [Mg/Fe] at low metallicities, paired with a large dispersion in [Mg/Fe]. These indicate the diverse origin of halo stars from accreted low-mass systems to stochastic/inhomogeneous chemical evolution in the Galactic halo., 15 pages, accepted for publication in ApJ

About 1% of giant stars have been shown to have large surface Li abundances, which is unexpected according to standard stellar evolution models. Several scenarios for lithium production have been proposed, but it is still unclear why these Li-rich giants exist. A missing piece in this puzzle is the knowledge of the exact stage of evolution of these stars. Using low-and-high-resolution spectroscopic observations, we have undertaken a survey of lithium-rich giants in the Kepler field. In this letter, we report the finding of the first confirmed Li-rich core-helium-burning giant, as revealed by asteroseismic analysis. The evolutionary timescales constrained by its mass suggest that Li-production most likely took place through non-canonical mixing at the RGB-tip, possibly during the helium flash., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, accepted in ApJ Letters

We investigate statistical equilibrium of neutral and singly-ionized strontium in late-type stellar atmospheres. Particular attention is given to the completeness of the model atom, which includes new energy levels, transition probabilities, photoionization and electron-impact excitation cross-sections computed with the R-matrix method. The NLTE model is applied to the analysis of Sr I and Sr II lines in the spectra of the Sun, Procyon, Arcturus, and HD 122563, showing a significant improvement in the ionization balance compared to LTE line formation calculations, which predict abundance discrepancies of up to 0.5 dex. The solar Sr abundance is log A = 2.93 \pm 0.04 dex, in agreement with the meteorites. A grid of NLTE abundance corrections for Sr I and Sr II lines covering a large range of stellar parameters is presented., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

We present a comprehensive analysis of different techniques available for the spectroscopic analysis of FGK stars, and provide a recommended methodology which efficiently estimates accurate stellar atmospheric parameters for large samples of stars. Our analysis includes a simultaneous equivalent width analysis of Fe I and Fe II spectral lines, and for the first time, utilises on-the-fly NLTE corrections of individual Fe I lines. We further investigate several temperature scales, finding that estimates from Balmer line measurements provide the most accurate effective temperatures at all metallicites. We apply our analysis to a large sample of both dwarf and giant stars selected from the RAVE survey. We then show that the difference between parameters determined by our method and that by standard 1D LTE excitation-ionisation balance of Fe reveals substantial systematic biases: up to 400 K in effective temperature, 1.0 dex in surface gravity, and 0.4 dex in metallicity for stars with [Fe/H] ~ -2.5. This has large implications for the study of the stellar populations in the Milky Way., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We have undertaken the study of the elemental abundances and kinematic properties of a metal-poor sample of candidate thick-disk stars selected from the RAVE spectroscopic survey of bright stars to differentiate among the present scenarios of the formation of the thick disk. In this paper, we report on a sample of 214 red giant branch, 31 red clump/horizontal branch, and 74 main-sequence/sub-giant branch metal-poor stars, which serves to augment our previous sample of only giant stars. We find that the thick disk [alpha/Fe] ratios are enhanced, and have little variation (, 21 pages, 31 figures, and 5 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

Theories of thick disk formation can be differentiated by measurements of stellar elemental abundances. We have undertaken a study of metal-poor stars selected from the RAVE spectroscopic survey of bright stars to establish whether or not there is a significant population of metal-poor thick-disk stars ([Fe/H], Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters

We report new constraints on the local escape speed of our Galaxy. Our analysis is based on a sample of high velocity stars from the RAVE survey and two previously published datasets. We use cosmological simulations of disk galaxy formation to motivate our assumptions on the shape of the velocity distribution, allowing for a significantly more precise measurement of the escape velocity compared to previous studies. We find that the escape velocity lies within the range $498\kms < \ve < 608 \kms$ (90 per cent confidence), with a median likelihood of $544\kms$. The fact that $\ve^2$ is significantly greater than $2\vc^2$ (where $\vc=220\kms$ is the local circular velocity) implies that there must be a significant amount of mass exterior to the Solar circle, i.e. this convincingly demonstrates the presence of a dark halo in the Galaxy. For a simple isothermal halo, one can calculate that the minimum radial extent is $\sim58$ kpc. We use our constraints on $\ve$ to determine the mass of the Milky Way halo for three halo profiles. For example, an adiabatically contracted NFW halo model results in a virial mass of $1.42^{+1.14}_{-0.54}\times10^{12}M_\odot$ and virial radius of $305^{+66}_{-45}$ kpc (90 per cent confidence). For this model the circular velocity at the virial radius is $142^{+31}_{-21}\kms$. Although our halo masses are model dependent, we find that they are in good agreement with each other., 19 pages, 9 figures, MNRAS (accepted). v2 incorporates minor cosmetic revisions which have no effect on the results or conclusions

The origin of a new kinematically identified metal-poor stellar stream, the KFR08 stream, has not been established. We present stellar parameters, stellar ages, and detailed elemental abundances for Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, Cr, Ni, Zn, Sr, Y, Zr, Ba, La, and Eu for 16 KFR08 stream members based on analysis of high resolution spectra. Based on the abundance ratios of 14 elements, we use the chemical tagging method to identify the stars which have the same chemical composition, and thus, might have a common birthplace, such as a cluster. Although three stars were tagged with similar elemental abundances ratios, we find that, statistically, it is not certain that they originate from a dissolved star cluster. This conclusion is consistent with the large dispersion of [Fe/H] ($\sigma_{\rm{[Fe/H]}} = 0.29$) among the 16 stream members. We find that our stars are $\alpha$ enhanced and that the abundance patterns of the stream members are well matched to the thick disk. In addition, most of the stream stars have estimated stellar ages larger than 11 Gyr. These results, together with the hot kinematics of the stream stars, suggest that the KFR08 stream is originated from the thick disk population which was perturbed by a massive merger in the early universe.

We have performed a spectral analysis on 18 stars solar sibling candidate. We found that only one one of the candidateshas solar metallicity and at the same time might have an age comparable to that of the Sun.

We report the discovery of eight lithium-rich field giants found in a high resolution spectroscopic sample of over 700 metal-poor stars ([Fe/H], Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ