In an attempt of clarifying the connection between the photospheric abundance anomalies and the stellar rotation as well as of exploring the nature of “normal A” stars, the abundances of seven elements (C, O, Si, Ca, Ti, Fe, and Ba) and the projected rotational velocity for 46 A-type field stars were determined by applying the spectrum-fitting method to the high-dispersion spectral data obtained with BOES at BOAO. We found that the peculiarities (underabundances of C, O, and Ca; an overabundance of Ba) seen in slow rotators efficiently decrease with an increase of rotation, which almost disappear at ve sin i > 100 km s−1. This further suggests that stars with sufficiently large rotational velocity may retain the original composition at the surface without being altered. Considering the subsolar tendency (by several tenths dex below) exhibited by the elemental abundances of such rapidly-rotating (supposedly normal) A stars, we suspect that the gas metallicity may have decreased since our Sun was born, contrary to the common picture of galactic chemical evolution.

To examine relations between stellar activity and rotation we estimated parameters of stellar activity such as R′ H K , R′ M g I I , R′ C I I , R′ C I V and R′ X − r a y from the published data which measure the activity levels of stellar chromospheres, transition regions and coronae. In the present study we considered only the main sequence stars in an attempt to minimize the influence of other stellar parameters such as radius, age and stellar convection on stellar activity since they are also known to affect the magnetic field generation. In the present analysis we selected only those stars that satisfy the following conditions: (1) flux measurements are available together with Ca II fluxes and (2) rotation periods are determined by Ca II observations. We derived relations between the ¯Rossby number Ro and stellar activity R′ H K , R′ M g I I , R′ C I I , R′ C I V and R′ X − r a y and assessed the relations by plotting R′ H K , R′ M g I I and R′ X − r a y against rotation period P rot for comparison with observations. From the comparison it is found that as far as the rotation-activity relation is concerned, (1) normalized surface flux R′ H K is better than the surface flux F′ H K , in the sense that R′ H K differentiates the color dependence better and (2) R′ H K defined by Rutten (1984) describes the observations notably better than R′ H K of Noyes et al. (1984).

New empirical relations between stellar CaII emission and rotation or age are derived by analyzing Wilson's CaII flux measurements (1968, 1978) of lower main sequence stars, and then we correlate them with their age and rotation rate. It is found that stellar chromospheric emission decays smoothly with age as a star slows down rotationally, establishing that both the emission level and rotation rate decrease with the square root of age.