Magnesium abundances in mildly metal-poor stars from different indicators

Abstract

We present magnesium abundances derived from high resolution spectra using several Mg I and two high excitation Mg II lines for 19 metal-poor stars with [Fe/H] values between -1.1 and +0.2. The main goal is to search for systematic differences in the derived abundances between the two ionisation state lines. Our analysis shows that the one-dimensional LTE and N-LTE study finds a very good agreement between these features. The [Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] relationship derived, despite the small sample of stars, is also in agreement with the classical figure of increasing [Mg/Fe] with decreasing metallicity. We find a significant scatter however, in the [Mg/Fe] ratio at [Fe/H]$\sim -0.6$ which is currently explained as a consequence of the overlap at this metallicity of thick and thin disk stars, which were probably formed from material with different nucleosynthesis histories. We speculate on the possible consequences of the agreement found between Mg I and Mg II lines on the very well known oxygen problem in metal-poor stars. We also study the [O/Mg] ratio in the sample stars using oxygen abundances from the literature and find that the current observations and nucleosynthetic predictions from type II supernovae disagree. We briefly discuss some alternatives to solve this discrepancy.