9Be abundances in dwarfs of intermediate metal deficiency: Impications for galactic evolution

We present observations of the 3130 Å Beii resonance doublet in stars of intermediate metal deficiency, –0.6[Fe/H]–1.1 obtained with the Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph and IPCS detector at the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma. The derived beryllium abundances range from 5.6×10^–12 (one hafl solar) to 2×10^–12 (one sixth solar). These values, interpolated between the sets of previous beryllium measurements at higher and at lower metallicities, serve to confirm the monotonic variation of the Be abundance with Fe during the evolution of the galactic disc. We find that there was no extreme burst of Be production in the halo. To circumvent the effects of depletion, a statistical set of data is needed, for which the upper envelope can be used to trace galactic Be evolution. We note that no observations with sufficient sensitivity to detect Be in the extremely metal deficient stars of the halo have been reported to date.