Authors
                Sara Bertrán de Lis
            
  Date and time
                                    16 Jun 2016 - 10:30 Europe/London
                            Address
                                    Aula
Talk language
                                    English
                            Description
                                    The  detection of chemical inhomogeities in the Galactic disk requires an  oustanding precision in the abundance measurements and a thorough  estimation of the uncertainties. So far, studies in alpha-elements in  disk stars either do not reach the required precision, or comprise too  small samples in the solar neighborhood. Thanks to the Apache Point  Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), we have for the first time a  large spectroscopic sample of about 100.000 disk stars, with data  homogeneously obtained, reduced, and analyzed. Taking advantage of such  database, we examine the distribution of oxygen-to-iron abundance ratio  in stars across the Galactic disk. These data reveal that the square  root of the star-to-star cosmic variance in the [O/Fe] at a given  metallicity is about 0.03 to 0.04 dex in both the thin- and thick-disk  populations. Measuring the spread in [O/Fe] and other abundance ratios  can provide strong constraints for models of Galactic chemical  evolution. In this talk we will describe how we arrived at this result,  the calculation of uncertainties, and implications regarding the  chemical evolution of the Galaxy.