The Digital Press

Chemical tagging aims to identify star formation sites by analyzing stellar chemical abundances, but this is challenging due to intrinsic scatter and measurement limits. This study quantifies how well certain element abundances predict others and reveals hidden correlations linked to nucleosynthesis processes in the galactic disk.

Why it matters: Chemical tagging requires extremely precise abundance measurements—better than 2%—to uniquely trace star formation origins.

The big picture: Element abundances in the disk are tightly coupled, limiting independent chemical information accessible at typical precision levels.

Stunning stat: Most α and Fe-peak elements can be predicted within 0.03 dex (~7% precision) using a simple linear regression model.

Bottom line: Residual abundance correlations encode star formation history and nucleosynthesis, guiding future high-precision galactic archaeology surveys.