Chemical Abundance Inhomogeneities in Globular Cluster Stars

Abstract

It is now clear that abundance variations from star-to-star among the light elements, particularly C, N, O, Na and Al, are ubiquitous within galactic globular clusters; they appear seen whenever data of high quality is obtained for a sufficiently large sample of stars within such a cluster. The correlations and anti-correlations among these elements and the range of variation of each element appear to be independent of stellar evolutionary state, with the exception that enhanced depletion of C and of O is sometimes seen just at the RGB tip. While the latter behavior is almost certainly due to internal production and mixing, the internal mixing hypothesis can now be ruled out for producing the bulk of the variations seen. We focus on the implications of our new data for any explanation invoking primordial variations in the proto-cluster or accretion of polluted material from a neighboring AGB star.

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