Non-LTE Line-Formation and Abundances of Sulfur and Zinc in F, G, and K Stars

Abstract Extensive statistical-equilibrium calculations on S I and Zn I were carried out, in order to investigate how the non-LTE effect plays a role in the determination of their abundances in F–K stars. Having checked on the spectra of representative F-type stars (Polaris, Procyon, $\alpha$ Per) and the Sun that our non-LTE corrections yield a reasonable consistency between the abundances derived from different lines, we tried an extensive non-LTE reanalysis of published equivalent-width data of S I and Zn I lines for metal-poor halo/disk stars. According to our calculations, S I 9212/9228/9237 lines suffer significant negative non-LTE corrections ($\lesssim 0.2 \hbox{--} 0.3 \,\mathrm{dex}$), while LTE is practically valid for S I 8683/8694 lines. As far as the very metal-poor regime is concerned, a marked discordance is observed between the $\mathrm{[S/Fe]}$ values from these two abundance indicators, in the sense that the former attains a nearly flat plateau (or even a slight downward bending) while the latter shows an ever-increasing trend with a further lowering of metallicity. The characteristics of $\mathrm{[Zn/Fe]}$ reported from recent LTE studies (i.e., an evident/slight increase of $\mathrm{[Zn/Fe]}$ with a decrease of $\mathrm{[Fe/H]}$ for very metal-poor/disk stars) were almost confirmed, since the non-LTE corrections for the Zn I 4722/4810 and 6362 lines (tending to be positive and gradually increasing toward lower $\mathrm{[Fe/H]}$) are quantitatively of less significance ($\lesssim 0.1 \,\mathrm{dex}$).

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