Does Planetary Formation Lead to Stellar Pollution?
Murray & Chaboyer (2002) have claimed that the large majority of stars had planet formation similar to our own solar system. This has led them to the prediction that stars will have been polluted by solid matter ejected from the planetisimal disk due to the formation of a Jupiter type planet. This solid matter hits the photosphere of the star after its’ convection zone has thinned, leading to an enhancement in the surface heavy element content. The degree of enhancement is a function of the total stellar mass and the condensation temperature of the element. The main focus of this thesis project is to test such stellar pollution scenario by looking for these subtle abundance pattern variations in different elements as a function of stellar mass and condensation temperature. A sample of 65 main-sequence Hyades stars has been observed with the high resolution spectrograph UVES at the VLT. These high dispersion spectra will be used to determine precise differential (with stellar mass) abun
