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Description
We present new homogeneous measurements of Na, Al, and three alpha-elements (Mg, Si, Ca) for 75 Galactic Cepheids, complemented with Cepheid abundances available in the literature, for a total of 439 stars. The abundances are based on high spectral resolution (R~38000) and high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N~50-300) spectra collected with UVES at ESO VLT. Special attention was given to providing a homogeneous abundance scale for these five elements plus iron. In addition, accurate Galactocentric distances (RG) based on near-infrared photometry are also available for all the Cepheids in the sample. We found that these five elements display well-defined linear radial gradients and modest standard deviations over the entire range of RG. The [element/Fe] abundance ratios are constant across the entire thin disk and over the entire period range; only the Ca radial distribution shows marginal evidence of slopes. These results indicate that the chemical enrichment history of iron and of the quoted elements has been quite similar across the four quadrants of the Galactic thin disk, and very homogenous within the range in age covered by the Cepheids (~10-300Myr). Finally, we also find that Cepheid abundances agree with similar abundances for thin and thick disk dwarf stars, and they follow the typical Mg-Al and Na-O correlations.
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