A Galactic Perspective on the (Unremarkable) Relative Refractory Depletion Observed in the Sun

Abstract Over the last two decades, the Sun has been observed to be depleted in refractory elements as a function of elemental condensation temperature ( T cond ) relative to ∼80% of its counterparts. We assess the impact of Galactic chemical evolution (GCE) on refractory element– T cond trends for 109,500 unique solar analogs from the GALAH, APOGEE, Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrometer, and M. Bedell et al. surveys. We find that a star’s [Fe/H] and [ α /Fe] are predicative of its T cond slope ( R 2 = 15 ± 5, 23% ± 10% respectively) while T eff and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:mi>g</mml:mi> </mml:math> contribute more weakly ( R 2 = 9 ± 5, 13% ± 16%). The Sun’s abundance pattern resembles that of more metal-rich (0.1 dex) and α -depleted stars (−0.02 dex), suggesting a connection to broader GCE trends. To more accurately model stars’ nucleosynthetic signatures, we apply the K -process model from E. J. Griffith et al., which casts each star’s abundance pattern as a linear combination of core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae contributions. We find the Sun appears chemically ordinary in this framework, consistent with the intrinsic population scatter expected from stellar nucleosynthesis. We show that refractory element– T cond trends arise because elements with higher T cond have higher contributions from core-collapse supernovae. Refractory element depletion trends primarily reflect nucleosynthetic enrichment patterns shaped by GCE and local interstellar medium inhomogeneities, with these processes accounting for &gt;90% of the observed variation within 2 σ . This work highlights how abundance diversity due to local and global chemical enrichment complicates the interpretation of population-scale, planet-related chemical signatures in current datasets.