2020, Schultheis, M., Rojas-Arriagada, A., Cunha, K., Zoccali, M., Chiappini, C., Zasowski, G., Queiroz, A.B.A., Minniti, D., Fritz, T., García-Hernández, D.A., Nitschelm, C., Zamora, O., Hasselquist, S., Fernández-Trincado, J.G., Munoz, R.R.

The Galactic center region, including the nuclear disk, has until recently been largely avoided in chemical census studies because of extreme extinction and stellar crowding. Large, near-IR spectroscopic surveys, such as the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), allow the measurement of metallicities in the inner region of our Galaxy. Making use of the latest APOGEE data release (DR16), we are able for the first time to study cool Asymptotic Giant branch (AGB) stars and supergiants in this region. The stellar parameters of five known AGB stars and one supergiant star (VR 5-7) show that their location is well above the tip of the red giant branch. We studied metallicities of 157 M giants situated within 150 pc of the Galactic center from observations obtained by the APOGEE survey with reliable stellar parameters from the APOGEE pipeline making use of the cool star grid down to 3200 K. Distances, interstellar extinction values, and radial velocities were checked to confirm that these stars are indeed situated in the Galactic center region. We detect a clear bimodal structure in the metallicity distribution function, with a dominant metal-rich peak of [Fe/H] ∼ +0.3 dex and a metal-poor peak around {Fe/H] = −0.5 dex, which is 0.2 dex poorer than Baade’s Window. The α-elements Mg, Si, Ca, and O show a similar trend to the Galactic bulge. The metal-poor component is enhanced in the α-elements, suggesting that this population could be associated with the classical bulge and a fast formation scenario. We find a clear signature of a rotating nuclear stellar disk and a significant fraction of high-velocity stars with vgal >  300 km s−1; the metal-rich stars show a much higher rotation velocity (∼200 km s−1) with respect to the metal-poor stars (∼140 km s−1). The chemical abundances as well as the metallicity distribution function suggest that the nuclear stellar disk and the nuclear star cluster show distinct chemical signatures and might be formed differently.

2017, Zhou, Yingying, Shen, Juntai, Liu, Chao, Li, Zhao-Yu, Mao, Shude, Kunder, Andrea, Rich, R. Michael, Zasowski, G., Fernandez-Trincado, J. G., Majewski, Steven R., Lin, Chien-Cheng, Geisler, Doug, Tang, Baitian, Villanova, S., Roman-Lopes, A., Schultheis, M., Nidever, David L., Meza, Andrés, Pan, Kaike, Bizyaev, D. V.

A cold, high-velocity (HV, ∼200 km s-1) peak was first reported in several Galactic bulge fields based on the Apache Point Observatory Galaxy Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) commissioning observations. Both the existence and the nature of the HV peak are still under debate. Here we revisit this feature with the latest APOGEE DR13 data. We find that most of the low-latitude bulge fields display a skewed Gaussian distribution with an HV shoulder. However, only 3 out of 53 fields show distinct HV peaks around 200 km s-1. The velocity distribution can be well described by Gauss-Hermite polynomials, except for the three fields showing clear HV peaks. We find that the correlation between the skewness parameter (h 3) and the mean velocity (), instead of a distinctive HV peak, is a strong indicator of the bar. It was recently suggested that the HV peak is composed of preferentially young stars. We choose three fields showing clear HV peaks to test this hypothesis using the metallicity, [α/M], and [C/N] as age proxies. We find that both young and old stars show HV features. The similarity between the chemical abundances of stars in the HV peaks and the main component indicates that they are not systematically different in terms of chemical abundance or age. In contrast, there are clear differences in chemical space between stars in the Sagittarius dwarf and the bulge stars. The strong HV peaks off-plane are still to be explained properly and could be different in nature.