Wilson-Bappu effect : an indicator of stellar surface gravity

Wilson and Bappu (1957), for the first time, and other precedent studies (Lutz & Kelker 1975; Pasquini et al. 1988; Dupree & Smith 1995; Wallerwstein et al. 1999; Pace et al. 2003) found a tight correlation (called Wilson-Bappu relationship - WBR) between stellar absolute visual magnitude and the width of the Ca II K line emission feature for late type stars. Here we re-visit WBR to claim that WBR can be an excellent indicator of stellar surface gravity of late type stars as well as a good indicator of distance. We have analyzed 103 high-resolution spectra of G, K and M type stars obtained by UVES and BOES by following the method by Pace et al. (2003) for measuring the widths of Ca II K lines(W). WBR found in our samples is Mv=33.26-17.79logW and the correlation is very tight. In this study, the stellar gravity(log g) has been derived using Kurucz ALAS9 model grid and MOOG code, which can determine $T_{eff}$ and [M/H] too.