A NEW SYNTHETIC LIBRARY OF THE NEAR-INFRARED Ca II TRIPLET INDICES. I. INDEX DEFINITION, CALIBRATION, AND RELATIONS WITH STELLAR ATMOSPHERIC PARAMETERS

Adopting the SPECTRUM package, which is a stellar spectral synthesis program, we have synthesized a comprehensive set of 2890 near-infrared (NIR) synthetic spectra with a resolution and wavelength sampling similar to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the forthcoming Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) spectra. During the synthesis, we applied the New grids of ATLAS9 Model Atmosphere to develop a grid of local thermodynamic equilibrium model atmospheres for effective temperatures (T-eff) ranging from 3500 to 7500 K, for surface gravities (log g) from 0.5 to 5.0 dex, for metallicities ([Fe/H]) from -4.0 to 0.5 dex, and for solar ([alpha /Fe] = 0.0 dex) and non-solar ([alpha /Fe] = +0.4 dex) abundances. This synthetic stellar library is composed of 1350 solar scaled abundance (SSA) and 1530 non-solar scaled abundance (NSSA) spectra, grounding on which we have defined a new set of NIR Ca II triplet indices and an index CaT as the sum of the three. These defined indices were automatically measured on every spectrum of the synthetic stellar library and calibrated with the indices computed on the observational spectra from the INDO-U.S. stellar library. In order to check the effect of alpha-element enhancement on the so-defined Ca II indices, we compared indices measured on the SSA spectra with those on the NSSA ones at the same trine of stellar parameters (T-eff, log g, [Fe/H]); luckily, little influences of alpha-element enhancement were found. Furthermore, comparisons of our synthetic indices with the observational ones from measurements on the INDO-U.S. stellar library, the SDSS-DR7 and SDSS-DR8 spectroscopic survey are presented, respectively, for dwarfs and giants in specific. For dwarfs, our synthetic indices could well reproduce the behaviors of the observational indices versus stellar parameters, which verifies the validity of our index definitions for dwarfs. For giants, the consistency between our synthetic indices and the observational ones does not appear to be as good. However, a new synthetic library of NIR Ca II indices has been founded for deeper studies on the NIR wave band of stellar spectra, and this library is particularly appropriate for the SDSS and the forthcoming LAMOST stellar spectra. We have regressed the strength of the CaT index as a function of stellar parameters for both dwarfs and giants after a series of experimental investigations into relations of the indices with stellar parameters. For dwarfs, log g has little effect on the indices, while [Fe/H] and T-eff play a role together. The leading factor is probably [Fe/H], which changes the strength of the indices by a positive trend. For giants, log g starts to influence the strength of the indices by a negative trend for the metal-poor, and even impact deeply for the metal-rich; besides, [Fe/H] and T-eff still matter. In addition, we briefly discussed the major differences between our Ca II triplet indices and the CaHK doublet indices. Ultimately, a supplemental experiment was carried out to show that spectral noises do have effects on our set of NIR Ca II indices. However, the influence is not weak enough to be ignored if the signal-to-noise ratio falls below 20.