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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 2(671), p. L125-L128, 2007

DOI: 10.1086/525021

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The link between chemical anomalies along the red giant branch and the horizontal branch extension in globular clusters

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We find a strong correlation between the extension of the Na-O anticorrelation observed in red giant branch (RGB) stars and the high temperature extension of the horizontal branch (HB) blue tails of Galactic globular clusters (GCs). The longer is the O-depleted tail of the Na-O anticorrelation observed in the RGB stars, the higher is the maximum temperature reached by the bluest HB stars in the GC. This result provides a clear, empirical evidence of a link between the extension of the HB and the presence of star-to-star abundance variations of proton-capture elements in GC stars. We discuss the possible interpretation of this correlation. ; Comment: Comments: 6 pages, 1 figure, uses emulateapj.cls; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters