# 1 Left panel shows the relation between the abundances using Strömgren 𝑏₁ colour, Cousins 𝑅-𝐼 and spectroscopically determined abundances. The right panel shows the histogram of oxygen abundances of 248 stars. This histogram shows clearly that there is a “K-dwarf problem”. The Pagel (1989) inflow model is shown as a dashed line and fits the data quite well.

One of the main issues in the chemical evolution of galaxies is the so called “G-dwarf problem” (Pagel and Patchett, 1975) in which the observed stellar metal distribution differs from the predicted in the sense that there are too many metal deficient stars. The same problem was now been seen among K-dwarfs, indicating the problem is a general one (Flynn and Morell, 1997).

We have used the Hipparcos catalogue to choose all K-dwarfs with absolute magnitude $`M_V`$ between $`5.5<M_V<7.3`$, within a radius of 54 parsecs with an apparent visual magnitude $`V<8.2+1.1\mathrm{s}in|b|`$, where $`b`$ is the galactic latitude. This sample consists of 642 stars and is complete. 408 of these stars were found from the Geneva photometric catalogue (Rufener, 1989) and 364 from the Strömgren catalogue of Hauck and Mermilliod (1998).

We have measured metallicities for 248 of these stars using $`RI`$ photometry from Bessell (1990) and Geneva and Strömgren based metallicity indicators. For stars with Geneva colours metallicities were found using existing relations for K-dwrafs (Flynn and Morell, 1997). We have developed a Strömgren photometric metallicity indicator for the stars with Strömgren colours. We used 34 G and K dwarfs from Flynn and Morell (1997) to define a relation between the Strömgren colours, the abundance \[Fe/H\] and effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. For these stars accurate, spectroscopically determined metallicity abundances were known and the effective temperatures were estimated using Cousins $`RI`$ photometry from the Gliese catalogue (Bessell, 1990).

In Fig. 1a the relation between spectroscopically determined metallicity and the Strömgren based metallicity is shown. The scatter around the one-to-one relation is $`0.2`$ dex.

Iron abundances \[Fe/H\] have been converted to oxygen abundances \[O/H\] as in Flynn and Morell (1997) using their equation 6. When comparing data and models oxygen abundances are more appropriate because oxygen is produced in short lived stars and can be treated using the convenient approximation of instantaneous recycling (Pagel, 1989).

The metallicity histogram for all 248 stars is shown in Fig. 1b. In this figure the K-dwarf problem is clearly seen. The histogram is peaked near solar metallicity and the number of metal deficient stars is small.

Note that the sample has not been corrected for two effects. Firstly, there is a kinematic bias against higher velocity stars in nearby samples (Sommer-Larsen, 1991). Secondly, the sample is slightly biased toward too many metal weak stars since these are more likely to be in the photometric catalogues we used. In the future we plan to observe the complete sample and thus remove these biases.

References

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Flynn, C. and Morell, O., 1997, MNRAS, 286, 617

Hauck, B., Mermilliod, M., 1998, A&AS, 129, 431

Sommer-Larsen, J., 1991, MNRAS, 249, 368

Pagel, B.E.J., 1989, Rev. Mex. Astr. Astrofis., 18, 153

Pagel, B.E.J., Patchett, B.E., 1975. MNRAS, 172, 13

Rufener, F., A&AS, 78, 469