Search

The nature of the few known solar-mass stars simultaneously containing debris disks and planets remains an open question. A number of works have shown that this property appears to be independent of planetary masses as well as of stellar age, but possible correlations with stellar kinematics and metallicity have not been investigated. In this paper, we show that the majority of known stars containing both debris disks and planets belong to the metal-enriched Galactic thin disk. The few exceptions are stars that seem to be born in the star formation peak occurring in times of thick disk formation (i.e., HD 10700, HD 20794, and HD 40307), that is, between 11 and 8 Gyr. The mass of the dusty disk of these three old stars measured at 70 μm is very small - in fact, it is lower than that of the Kuiper belt of our Solar system by several orders of magnitude. These results are not surprising, as they remain within the values expected for the stellar disk evolution of such primitive stars. In parallel, we found another six thick-disk stars containing only debris disks or planets. These results enable us to establish a correlation between stellar metallicity and the mass of the dust disk modulated by the different formation epochs of the thick and thin Galactic disks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dwarf stars with debris discs and planets appear to be excellent laboratories to study the core accretion theory of planets formation. These systems are however, insufficiently studied. In this paper we present the main metallicity and lithium abundance properties of these stars together with stars with only debris discs and stars with only planets. Stars without detected planets or discs are also considered. The analysed sample is formed by main-sequence FGK field single stars. Apart from the basic stellar parameters, we include the use of dusty discs masses. The main results show for the first time that the dust mass of debris disc stars with planets correlate with metallicity. We confirm that these disc dust masses are related to their central stellar masses. Separately, the masses of stars and those of planets also correlate with metallicity. We conclude that two conditions are necessary to form giant planets: to have a sufficient metallicity and also a sufficient protoplanetary mass of gas and dust. The debris discs masses of stars without giant planets do not correlate with metallicity, because they do not fulfil these two conditions. Concerning lithium, by adopting a stellar model for lithium depletion based on a strong interaction between the star and a protoplanetary disc, we found that in agreement with the model predictions, observations indicate that the main lithium depletion occurs during this initial protoplanetary evolution stage. We show that the ultimately lithium depletion is independent of the presence or absence of planets and appears to be only age dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an homogeneous analysis of photospheric abundances based on high-resolution spectroscopy of a sample of 182 barium stars and candidates. We determined atmospheric parameters, spectroscopic distances, stellar masses, ages, luminosities and scaleheight, radial velocities, abundances of the Na, Al, #945;-elements, iron-peak elements, and s-process elements Y, Zr, La, Ce, and Nd. We employed the local thermodynamic equilibrium model atmospheres of Kurucz and the spectral analysis code MOOG. We found that the metallicities, the temperatures and the surface gravities for barium stars cannot be represented by a single Gaussian distribution. The abundances of a-elements and iron peak elements are similar to those of field giants with the same metallicity. Sodium presents some degree of enrichment in more evolved stars that could be attributed to the NeNa cycle. As expected, the barium stars show overabundance of the elements created by the s-process. By measuring the mean heavy-element abundance pattern as given by the ratio [s/Fe], we found that the barium stars present several degrees of enrichment. We also obtained the [hs/ls] ratio by measuring the photospheric abundances of the Ba-peak and the Zr-peak elements. Our results indicated that the [s/Fe] and the [hs/ls] ratios are strongly anticorrelated with the metallicity. Our kinematical analysis showed that 90 per cent of the barium stars belong to the thin disc population. Based on their luminosities, none of the barium stars are luminous enough to be an asymptotic giant branch star, nor to become self-enriched in the s-process elements. Finally, we determined that the barium stars also follow an age-metallicity relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spectroscopic studies of seven low mass stars in spectral classes F, G, and K are presented. Four of these (HD 1581, HD 10700, HD 17925, and HD 22484) have debris disks and for two of them (HD 22049 and HD 222582(A + B)) planets are observed. Neither a debris disk nor planets have been observed for one the program stars (HD 20766). High resolution spectral observations of the program stars were made at the 2.2-m telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) during 2008 with the FEROS spectrograph (R = 48000, spectral range 3800-9200 Å). The fundamental parameters of the stars are determined, including effective temperature, acceleration of gravity at the stars’ surface, microturbulence velocity, metallicity, and the abundances of volatile and refractory elements in their atmospheres. The positions of all these stars are indicated on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]