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Description
We present a detailed elemental abundance study of 714 F and G dwarf and subgiant stars in the Solar neighbourhood. The analysis is based on high-resolution spectra obtained with MIKE on the Magellan telescope, FEROS on the ESO 1.5m and 2.2m telescopes, HARPS on the ESO 3.6m telescope, UVES on the ESO Very Large Telescope, SOFIN and FIES on the Nordic Optical Telescope. Our data show that there is an old and alpha-enhanced disk population, and a younger and less alpha-enhanced disk population. While they overlap greatly in metallicity between -0.7<[Fe/H]<+0.1, they show a bimodal distribution in [alpha/Fe]. This bimodality becomes even clearer if stars where stellar parameters and abundances show larger uncertainties (Teff<5400K) are discarded, showing that it is important to constrain the data set to a narrow range in the stellar parameters if small differences between stellar populations are to be revealed. In addition, we find that the alpha-enhanced population has orbital parameters placing the stellar birthplaces in the inner Galactic disk while the low-alpha stars mainly come from the outer Galactic disk, fully consistent with the recent claims of a short scale-length for the alpha-enhanced Galactic thick disk. We have also investigated the properties of the Hercules stream and the Arcturus moving group.
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