ON THE METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION OF THE PECULIAR GLOBULAR CLUSTER M22

In our previous study, we showed that the peculiar globular cluster (GC) M22 contains two distinct stellar populations, namely the Ca-w and Ca-s groups, which have different physical properties, chemical compositions, spatial distributions, and kinematics. We proposed that M22 was most likely formed via a merger of two GCs with heterogeneous metallicities in a dwarf galaxy environment and then later accreted to our Galaxy. In their recent study, Mucciarelli et al. claimed that M22 is a normal monometallic globular cluster without any perceptible metallicity spread among the two groups of stars, which challenges our results and those of others. We devise new strategies for the local thermodynamic equilibrium abundance analysis of red giant branch stars in GCs and show that there exists a spread in the iron abundance distribution in M22.