The Chemical Abundances of Hypervelocity Stars in the Milky Way Disk

We present preliminary results of the analysis of chemical abundances for seven hypervelocity star (HVS) candidates. These objects are G and K dwarfs in the Galactic disk selected from the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration. Unlike other HVSs discovered thus far, their stellar orbits and kinematics suggest that they do not originate in the Galactic center or in an accretion event. These factors imply yet-unknown mechanisms that give rise to these kinematically-extreme disk stars. In order to study in detail their progenitors and possible formation mechanisms, we obtained spectra of these stars at a resolving power of R~6000, with the Dual Imaging Spectrograph at the Apache Point Observatory. We derive the abundances of chemical elements, C, Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe, and Ba from the observed spectra, using MOOG. We compare them with the ones of typical Galactic disk stars and discuss discrepancies between them to search for clues to their origin.