SPECTROSCOPIC STUDY ON RED GIANTS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

구상성단 거성들의 분광 연구

A large scatter of the chemical abundances among globular cluster red giants has been observed. Especially the chemical elements C, N, O, Na, Mg, and Al vary form star to star within globular clusters. Except for $\omega$ Cen and M22, most globular clusters could be considered to be monometallic of their iron peak elements within error ranges. The variations in light elements among globuar cluster giants appear much more pronounced than in field halo giants of comparable Fe-peak metallicity. It has been found that in general the nitrogen abundance is anticorrelated with both carbon and oxygen, while it is correlated with Na and AI. These intracluster abundance inhomogeneities can be interpreted either by mixing of nucleosythesized material from the deep stellar interior during the red giant branch phase of evolution or by inhomogeneities of primordially processed material, from which the stars were formed. The simple way of distingushing between two senarios is to obtain the element abundances of main-sequence stars in globular clusters, which are too faint for high resolution spectroscopic studies until now. Both 'evolutionary' and 'primodial' origins are accepted for explanations of abundance variations among red giants and CN-CH anticorrelations among main-sequence stars in globular clusters. This paper reviews chemical abundances of light elements among globular cluster giants, with brief reviews of cannonical stellar evolution of low mass stars after main-sequence and deep mixing for abundance variations of cluster giants, and a possible connection between deep mixing and second parameter.