Gaia RVS benchmark stars. I.

Because the LSF may vary across the focal plane of the RVS, a large number of high-quality spectra for the LSF calibration may allow us to better sample the properties of the focal plane. We selected a sample of stars to be observed with UVES at the Very Large Telescope, in a setting including the wavelength range of RVS, that are bright enough to allow obtaining high-quality spectra in a short time. We also selected stars that lack chemical investigation in order to increase the sample of bright, close by stars with a complete chemical inventory.

We here present the chemical analysis of the first sample of 80 evolved stars. The quality of the spectra is very good, therefore we were able to derive abundances for 20 elements. The metallicity range spanned by the sample is about 1dex, from slightly metal-poor to solar metallicity.

We derived the Rb abundance for all stars and investigated departures from local thermodynamical equilibrium (NLTE) in the formation of its lines. The sample of spectra is of good quality, which is useful for a Gaia radial velocity calibration. The Rb NLTE effects in this stellar parameters range are small but sometimes non-negligible, especially for spectra of this good quality.