A new set of chisels for Galactic archaeology: Sc, V and Zn as taggers of accreted globular clusters

Understand

Chemical tagging is a powerful tool to reveal the origin of stars and globular clusters (GCs), especially when dynamics alone cannot provide robust answers.

• So far, mostly $\alpha$- and neutron capture elements have been used to distinguish stars born in the Milky Way (MW) from those born in external environments such as that of dwarf galaxies.
• Here, instead, we use iron-peak elements abundances to investigate the origin of a sample of metal-rich globular clusters.
• By homogeneously analyzing high-resolution UVES spectra of giant stars belonging to four metal-rich GCs (namely NGC 5927, NGC 6388, NGC 6441, NGC 6496), we find that while the $\alpha$-elements Si and Ca have similar abundance ratios for all the four GCs, and Ti and neutron capture elements (La, Ba and Eu) only show a marginal discrepancy, a stark difference is found when considering the abundances of some iron-peak elements (Sc, V and Zn).