Abundances of metal-poor stars in the Inner Bulge

Since numerous simulations of Milky Way formation have predicted that the oldest stars at a given metallicity are found on tightly bound orbits, the Galaxy's oldest stars are likely metal-poor stars in the inner bulge with small apocenters (i.e., Rapo <~4kpc). In the past, stars with these properties have been impossible to find due to extreme reddening and extinction along the line of sight to the inner bulge.

We have used the mid-infrared metal-poor star selection of Schlaufman & Casey (2014) on Spitzer/Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire data to overcome these problems and target candidate inner bulge metal-poor giants for moderate-resolution spectroscopy with Anglo-Australian Telescope/AAOmega. We used those data to select three confirmed metal-poor giants ([Fe/H]=-3.15, -2.56, -2.03) for follow-up high-resolution Magellan/Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle spectroscopy.