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Description
The abundances of carbon, oxygen, and iron in late-type stars are important parameters in exoplanetary and stellar physics, as well as key tracers of stellar populations and Galactic chemical evolution. However, standard spectroscopic abundance analyses can be prone to severe systematic errors, by the assumption that the stellar atmosphere is one-dimensional (1D) and hydrostatic, and by ignoring departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). To address this, we carry out 3D non-LTE radiative transfer calculations for CI and OI, and 3D LTE radiative transfer calculations for FeII, across the stagger-grid of 3D hydrodynamic model atmospheres. The absolute 3D non-LTE versus 1D LTE abundance corrections can be as severe as ~0.3dex for CI lines in low-metallicity F dwarfs, and ~0.6dex for OI lines in high-metallicity F dwarfs. The 3D LTE versus 1D LTE abundance corrections for FeII lines are less severe, typically less than +0.15dex. We use the corrections in a re-analysis of carbon, oxygen, and iron in 187 F and G dwarfs in the Galactic disk and halo. Applying the differential 3D non-LTE corrections to 1D LTE abundances visibly reduces the scatter in the abundance plots. The thick disk and high- halo population rise in carbon and oxygen with decreasing metallicity, reaching a maximum of [C/Fe]~=0.2 and a plateau of [O/Fe]~=0.6 at [Fe/H]~=~1.0. The low- halo population is qualitatively similar, albeit offset towards lower metallicities and with larger scatter. Nevertheless, these populations overlap in the [C/O] versus [O/H] plane, decreasing to a plateau of [C/O]~=0.6 below [O/H]~=1.0. In the thin-disk, stars having confirmed planet detections tend to have higher values of C/O at given [O/H]; this potential signature of planet formation is only apparent after applying the abundance corrections to the 1D LTE results. Our grids of line-by-line abundance corrections are publicly available and can readily be used to improve the accuracy of spectroscopic analyses of late-type stars.
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