Abundances in Galactic Bulge Dwarfs and the Origin of the Elements in the Bulge

Abstract

The Galactic Bulge has a very different chemical evolution history than the Milky Way disk or halo. The unique mix of supernovae and asymptotic giant branch stars that have contributed to the elements in the bulge offer the opportunity to identify or confirm the nucleosynthesis sites of elements. Abundance measurements based on the spectra of Galactic bulge dwarfs provide the only reliable measurements of the evolution of C and N in the Bulge, and have also been the source of the first measurements of S, K, Zn, Cu and Ba. We report on the use of gravitational microlensing to observe very faint Galactic bulge dwarfs and discuss the implications of these measurements for the origin of the elements. In particular, we argue that Type Ia SNe are unlikely to be important sources of Zn, but while the data on C and N suggest that asymptotic giant stars contributed to the chemical enrichment of the bulge, the data on Ba suggest that there was a delay before substantial AGB star production.