Detailed abundances for the old population near the galactic center. I. Metallicity distribution of the nuclear star cluster
We report the first high spectral resolution study of 17 M giants kinematically confirmed to lie within a few parsecs of the Galactic center, using R ~ 24,000 spectroscopy from Keck/NIRSPEC and a new line list for the infrared K band. We consider their luminosities and kinematics, which classify these stars as members of the older stellar population and the central cluster. We find a median metall