Age of FGK Dwarfs Observed with LAMOST and GALAH: Considering the Oxygen Enhancement

Abstract

Varying oxygen abundance could impact modeling-inferred ages. This work aims to estimate the ages of dwarfs considering observed oxygen abundance. To characterize 67,503 LAMOST and 4006 GALAH FGK-type dwarf stars, we construct a grid of stellar models, which take into account oxygen abundance as an independent model input. Compared with ages determined with commonly used α -enhanced models, we find a difference of ∼9% on average when the observed oxygen abundance is considered. The age differences between the two types of models are correlated to [Fe/H] and [O/ α ], and they are relatively significant on stars with [Fe/H] ≲ −0.6 dex. Generally, varying 0.2 dex in [O/ α ] will alter the age estimates of metal-rich (−0.2 < [Fe/H] < 0.2) stars by ∼10% and relatively metal-poor (−1 < [Fe/H] < −0.2) stars by ∼15%. Of the low-O stars with [Fe/H] < 0.1 dex and [O/ α ] ∼−0.2 dex, many have fractional age differences of ≥ 10% and even reach up to 27%. The fractional age difference of high-O stars with [O/ α ] ∼0.4 dex reaches up to −33% to −42% at [Fe/H] ≲ −0.6 dex. We also analyze the chemical properties of these stars. We find a decreasing trend of [Fe/H] with ages from 7.5–9 Gyr to 5–6.5 Gyr for the stars from the LAMOST and GALAH. The [O/Fe] of these stars increases with decreasing age from 7.5–9 Gyr to 3–4 Gyr, indicating that the younger population is more O rich.

Keywords

• Stellar abundances
• Stellar ages
• Stellar kinematics
• Milky Way disk
• Fundamental parameters of stars