Abundances of red giants in NGC 6752

We find that [Al/Fe] shows a spread of about 1.4 dex among giants in NGC 6752 and is anticorrelated with [Mg/Fe] and [O/Fe] and correlated with [Na/Fe] and [Si/Fe]. These relations are not continuous in nature, but the distribution of stars is clearly clustered around three distinct Al values, low, intermediate, and high.

These three groups nicely correspond to the three distinct sequences previously detected using Stromgren photometry along the red giant branch. These two independent findings strongly indicate the existence of three distinct stellar populations in NGC 6752. Comparing the abundances of O and Mg, we find that the population with intermediate chemical abundances cannot originate from material with the same composition of the most O- and Mg-poor population, diluted by material with that of the most O- and Mg-rich one.