The Chemical/Dynamical Evolution of the Galactic Bulge

Abstract

The last decade has seen apparent dramatic progress in large spectroscopic datasets aimed at the study of the Galactic bulge. We consider remaining problems that appear to be intractable with the existing data, including important issues such as whether the bulge and thick disk actually show distinct chemistry, and apparent dramatic changes in morphology at Solar metallicity, as well as large scale study of the heavy elements (including r-process) in the bulge. Although infrared spectroscopy is powerful, the lack of heavy element atomic transitions in the infrared renders impossible any survey of heavy elements from such data. We argue that uniform, high S/N, high resolution data in the optical offer an outstanding opportunity to resolve these problems and explore other populations in the bulge, such as RR Lyrae and hot HB stars.