Reversed radial distribution trend of subpopulations in the globular clusters NGC 362 and NGC 6723 [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.08174


Most globular clusters (GCs) are now known to host multiple stellar populations with different light element abundances. Here we use narrow-band photometry and low-resolution spectroscopy for NGC 362 and NGC 6723 to investigate their chemical properties and radial distributions of subpopulations. We confirm that NGC 362 and NGC 6723 are among the GCs with multiple populations showing bimodal CN distribution and CN-CH anti-correlation without a significant spread in calcium abundance. These two GCs show more centrally concentrated CN-weak earlier generation stars compared to the later generation CN-strong stars. These trends are reversed with respect to those found in previous studies for many other GCs. Our findings, therefore, seem contradictory to the current scenario for the formation of multiple stellar populations, but mass segregation acting on the two subpopulations might be a possible solution to explain this reversed radial trend.

Read this paper on arXiv…

D. Lim, Y. Lee, M. Pasquato, et. al.
Wed, 28 Sep 16
19/60

Comments: 12 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ