Description
We present a technique that applies spectral synthesis to medium-resolution spectroscopy (MRS; R~6000) in the red (6300{AA}<{lambda}<9100{AA}) to measure [Fe/H] and [{alpha}/Fe] of individual red giant stars over a wide metallicity range. We apply our technique to 264 red giant stars in seven Galactic globular clusters and demonstrate that it reproduces the metallicities and {alpha}-enhancements derived from high-resolution spectroscopy (HRS). The MRS technique excludes the three CaII triplet lines and instead relies on a plethora of weaker lines. Unlike empirical metallicity estimators, such as the equivalent width of the CaII triplet, the synthetic method presented here is applicable over an arbitrarily wide metallicity range and is independent of assumptions about the {alpha}-enhancement.
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