The GALAH survey: tracing the Galactic disk with Open Clusters

Lorenzo Spina, Yuan-Sen Ting, Gayandhi M. De Silva, Neige Frankel, Sanjib Sharma, Tristan Cantat-Gaudin, Meridith Joyce, Dennis Stello, Amanda I. Karakas, Martin B. Asplund, Thomas Nordlander, Luca Casagrande, Valentina D'Orazi, Andrew R. Casey, Peter Cottrell, Thor Tepper-García, Martina Baratella, Janez Kos, Klemen Čotar, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Sven Buder, Ken C. Freeman, Michael R. Hayden, Geraint F. Lewis, Jane Lin, Karin Lind, Sarah L. Martell, Katharine J. Schlesinger, Jeffrey D. Simpson, Daniel B. Zucker, Tomaž Zwitter

Published 2020-11-04Version 1

Open clusters are unique tracers of the history of our own Galaxy's disk. According to our membership analysis based on \textit{Gaia} astrometry, out of the 226 potential clusters falling in the footprint of GALAH or APOGEE, we find that 205 have secure members that were observed by at least one of the survey. Furthermore, members of 134 clusters have high-quality spectroscopic data that we use to determine their chemical composition. We leverage this information to study the chemical distribution throughout the Galactic disk of 21 elements, from C to Eu, and including Fe. The radial metallicity gradient obtained from our analysis is $-$0.076$\pm$0.009 dex kpc$^{-1}$, which is in agreement with previous works based on smaller samples. Furthermore, the gradient in the [Fe/H] - guiding radius (r$_{\rm guid}$) plane is $-$0.073$\pm$0.008 dex kpc$^{-1}$. We also reveal trends in the [X/Fe] - r$_{\rm guid}$ - age space, which are important to understand production rates of different elements as a function of space and time. Finally, we observe subtle - but significant - differences on how field stars and open clusters trace the distribution of chemical elements throughout the Galactic disk. As it is discussed in the paper, these differences are probably due to the physical selection effect imposed by our Galaxy, which preserves the clusters living far from its gravitational potential perturbations (e.g., spirals, bars, molecular clouds), while it destroys all the others.