# 1 Boxplot of M4 Giant Star Abundances - A boxed horizontal line indicates the interquartile range [IQ] & median found for a particular element. Vertical tails extending from the boxes indicate the total range of abundances determined for each element, excluding outliers. Mild outliers (within 1.5×IQ) are denoted by hollow circles (o) & severe outliers (from 1.5 to 3×IQ) by filled circles (∙). The dashed line represents the solar value for a particular elemental abundance.

Many low-metallicity globular clusters exhibit large star-to-star variations of C, N, O, Na, Mg, & Al abundances. In higher-metallicity clusters, the abundance swings are muted. Evidence of anticorrelations of O versus Na and Mg versus Al exists in classical northern-hemisphere clusters spanning a range of metallicities, –0.8 $``$ \[Fe/H\] $``$ –2.2. These and other anticorrelations, observed to be a function of giant branch position, are consistent with material having undergone proton-capture nucleosynthesis, presumably taking place in regions where the CNO-cycle is in operation, and brought to the surface by a deep-mixing mechanism. Distinctly bimodal distributions of cyanogen strengths at nearly all giant branch positions are observed in some clusters, including M4 (Norris 1981). The metallicity of M4 (\[Fe/H\] $``$ –1) places it among clusters in which the O versus Na and Mg versus Al anticorrelations are expected to be suppressed. Indeed, not much abundance variation has been observed in small samples of M4 giant stars (see e.g. Brown & Wallerstein 1992). This puzzle led us to consider an abundance study of a large sample of bright giants in the mildly metal-poor globular cluster M4, the nearest, brightest, and one of the most accessible targets in which to study the CN-bimodal phenomenon.

We observed 20 M4 giant stars in 1997 using high resolution échelle spectrographs covering the effective wavelength range: $`\lambda \lambda `$ 5200 to 8800$`\mathrm{\AA }`$ on the 2.7-m at McDonald Observatory (R $`60,000`$) and the 3.0-m at Lick Observatory (R $`50,000`$).

Large and differential interstellar reddening due to the dark nebulosity in Scorpio-Ophiuchus does not permit a careful estimate of reddenings for individual stars; one cannot assume a strict $`(BV)`$ versus Teff relationship. Instead, we obtained precise Teffs by employing two different spectroscopic techniques: (1) ratios of central depths of temperature sensitive absorption features (Gray 1994) to initially estimate relative stellar Teffs and (2) as in previous Lick-Texas work, final Teffs were determined in conjunction with surface gravity and microturbulence constraints.

The scatter about the mean (of elements not expected to be sensitive to proton-capture nucleosynthesis) compares well to those obtained in other high resolution cluster work and, as expected, no trend with Teff is observed for these non-volatiles. In individual M4 stars, anticorrelated abundances of N/Na/Al with C/O provide strong evidence for high-temperature proton-capture nucleosynthesis. We also observe increasing O-depletion/N-enhancement as stars ascend the RGB but combined log<sub>ϵ</sub>(C+N+O) remains $``$ constant. Extremely low carbon isotope ratios (<sup>12</sup>C/<sup>13</sup>C = 4.6 $`\pm `$ 0.8) indicate that the onset of mixing of the CNO-cycled material occurs at a luminosity lower than that of our observed stars. Elements Na, Mg, Si, & Ca are all enhanced with respect to the iron abundance, in approximate agreement with previous high resolution studies of M4 (Brown & Wallerstein, 1992). Al and Ba show uniform enhancements indicative of primordial enrichment. The analysis also confirms anomalous absorption properties of dust along line of sight to M4 ($`E(VK)/E(BV)=R=3.8\pm 0.4`$) that deviate from the normal law of interstellar extinction.