Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(712), p. 527-535, 2010

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/712/1/527

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

On THE ΔVbumpHBPARAMETER IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

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

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We present new empirical estimates of the ΔV bump HB parameter for 15 Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) using accurate and homogeneous ground-based optical data. Together with similar evaluations available in the literature, we ended up with a sample of 62 GGCs covering a very broad range in metal content (–2.16 dex ≤ [M/H] ≤ –0.58 dex). Adopting the homogeneous metallicity scale provided either by Kraft & Ivans or by Carretta et al., we found that the observed ΔV bump HB parameters are larger than predicted. In the metal-poor regime ([M/H] –1.7, –1.6 dex) 40% of GCs show discrepancies of 2σ (0.40 mag) or more. Evolutionary models that account either for α- and CNO-enhancement or for helium enhancement do not alleviate the discrepancy between theory and observations. The outcome is the same if we use the new solar heavy-element mixture. The comparison between α- and CNO-enhanced evolutionary models and observations in the Carretta et al. metallicity scale also indicates that observed ΔV bump HB parameters, in the metal-rich regime ([M/H] ≥ 0), might be systematically smaller than predicted.