We present homogeneous abundance determinations for iron and some of the elements involved in the proton-capture reactions (O, Na, Mg, Al, and Si) for 202 red giants in 17 Galactic globular clusters (GCs) from the analysis of high-resolution UVES spectra obtained with the FLAMES facility at the ESO VLT2 telescope. Our programme clusters span almost the whole range of the metallicity distribution of GCs and were selected to sample the widest range of global parameters (horizontal-branch morphology, masses, concentration, etc.). In this paper we focus on the discussion of the Na-O and Mg-Al anticorrelations and related issues. Our study finds clear Na and O star-to-star abundance variations, exceeding those expected from the error in the analysis, in all clusters. Variations in Al are present in all but a few GCs. Finally, a spread in abundances of Mg and Si are also present in a few clusters. Mg is slightly less overabundant and Si slightly more overabundant in the most Al-rich stars. The correlation between Si and Al abundances is a signature of production of 28 Si leaking from the Mg-Al cycle in a few clusters. The cross sections required for the proper reactions to take over in the cycle point to temperatures in excess of about 65 million K for the favoured site of production. We used a dilution model to infer the total range of Al abundances starting from the Na and Al abundances in the FLAMES-UVES spectra, and the Na abundance distributions found from analysis of the much larger set of stars for which FLAMES-GIRAFFE spectra were available. We found that the maximum amount of additional Al produced by first-generation polluters contributing to the composition of the second-generation stars in each cluster is closely correlated with the same combination of metallicity and cluster luminosity that reproduced the minimum O-abundances found from GIRAFFE spectra. We then suggest that the high temperatures required for the Mg-Al cycle are only reached in the most massive and most metal-poor polluters.

In this paper we present a new chemical evolution model for the Galaxy which assumes two main infall episodes for the formation of halo-thick disk and thin disk, respectively. We do not try to take into account explicitly the evolution of the halo since our model is better suited for computing the evolution of the disk (thick plus thin) but we implicitly assume that the timescale for the formation of the halo was of the same order as the timescale for the formation of the thick disk.The formation of the thin-disk is much longer than that of the thick disk, implying that the infalling gas forming the thin-disk comes not only from the thick disk but mainly from the intergalactic medium.The timescale for the formation of the thin-disk is assumed to be a function of the galactocentric distance, leading to an inside-out picture for the Galaxy building. The model takes into account the most up to date nucleosynthesis prescriptions and adopts a threshold in the star formation process which naturally produces a hiatus in the star formation rate at the end of the thick disk phase, as suggested by recent observations. The model results are compared with an extended set of observational constraints both for the solar neighbourhood and the whole disk. Among these constraints, the tightest one is the metallicity distribution of the G-dwarf stars for which new data are now available. Our model fits very well these new data.The model predicts also the evolution of the gas mass, the star formation rate, the supernova rates and the abundances of 16 chemical elements as functions of time and galactocentric distance. We show that in order to reproduce most of these constraints a timescale ≤ 1 Gyr for the (halo)-thick-disk and of 8 Gyr for the thin-disk formation in the solar vicinity are required.-3 -We predict that the radial abundance gradients in the inner regions of the disk (R < R ⊙ ) are steeper than in the outer regions, a result confirmed by recent abundance determinations, and that the inner ones steepen in time during the Galactic lifetime. The importance and the advantages of assuming a threshold gas density for the onset of the star formation process is discussed.

Abundance variations within globular clusters (GCs), and of GC stars with respect to field stars, are important diagnostics of a variety of physical phenomena, related to the evolution of individual stars, mass transfer in binary systems, and chemical evolution in high density environments. The broad astrophysical implications of GCs as building blocks of our knowledge of the Universe make a full understanding of their history and evolution basic in a variety of astrophysical fields. We review the current status of the research in this field, comparing the abundances in GCs with those obtained for field stars, discussing in depth the evidence for H-burning at high temperatures in GC stars, describing the process of self-enrichment in GCs with particular reference to the case of the most massive Galactic GC (ω Cen), and discussing various classes of cluster stars with abundance anomalies. Whereas the overall pattern might appear very complex at first sight, exciting new scenarios are opening where the interplay between GC dynamical and chemical properties are closely linked with each other.

We present abundances of Fe, Na, and O for 1409 red giant stars in 15 galactic globular clusters (GCs), derived from the homogeneous analysis of high-resolution FLAMES/GIRAFFE spectra. Combining the present data with results from our FLAMES/UVES spectra and from previous studies within the project, we obtained a total sample of 1958 stars in 19 clusters, the largest and most homogeneous database of this kind to date. The programme clusters cover a range in metallicity from [Fe/H] = −2.4 dex to [Fe/H] = −0.4 dex, with a wide variety of global parameters (morphology of the horizontal branch, mass, concentration, etc.). For all clusters we find the Na-O anticorrelation, the classical signature of the operation of proton-capture reactions in H-burning at high temperature in a previous generation of more massive stars that are now extinct. Using quantitative criteria (from the morphology and extension of the Na-O anticorrelation), we can define three different components of the stellar population in GCs. We separate a primordial component (P) of first-generation stars, and two components of second-generation stars, that we name intermediate (I) and extreme (E) populations from their different chemical composition. The P component is present in all clusters, and its fraction is almost constant at about one third. The I component represents the bulk of the cluster population. On the other hand, E component is not present in all clusters, and it is more conspicuous in some (but not in all) of the most massive clusters. We discuss the fractions and spatial distributions of these components in our sample and in two additional clusters (M 3 = NGC 5272 and M 13 = NGC6205) with large sets of stars analysed in the literature. We also find that the slope of the anti-correlation (defined by the minimum O and maximum Na abundances) changes from cluster-to-cluster, a change that is represented well by a bilinear relation on cluster metallicity and luminosity. This second dependence suggests a correlation between average mass of polluters and cluster mass.

We have collected spectra of about 2000 red giant branch (RGB) stars in 19 Galactic globular clusters (GC) using FLAMES@VLT (about 100 stars with GIRAFFE and about 10 with UVES, respectively, in each GC). These observations provide an unprecedented, precise, and homogeneous data-set of Fe abundances in GCs. We use it to study the cosmic scatter of iron and find that, as far as Fe is concerned, most GCs can still be considered mono-metallic, since the upper limit to the scatter of iron is less than 0.05 dex, meaning that the degree of homogeneity is better than 12%. The scatter in Fe we find seems to have a dependence on luminosity, possibly due to the well-known inadequacies of stellar atmospheres for upper-RGB stars and/or to intrinsic variability. It also seems to be correlated with cluster properties, like the mass, indicating a larger scatter in more massive GCs which is likely a (small) true intrinsic scatter. The 19 GCs, covering the metallicity range of the bulk of Galactic GCs, define an accurate and updated metallicity scale. We provide transformation equations for a few existing scales. We also provide new values of [Fe/H], on our scale, for all GCs in the Harris catalogue.