Chemical similarities between the Galactic bulge and local thick disk red giant stars: analysis from optical data

The Galactic structure and composition remain as one of the greatest open problems in modern astrophysics. We show here that there are chemical similarities between the Galactic bulge and local thick disk red giant stars. This finding puts strong constraints on the IMF, SFR and chemical enrichment timescale of the bulge and thick disk. Our results are based upon a detailed elemental abundance analysis of 80 high S/N and high resolution optical spectra of giant stars, in the range -1.5 < [Fe/H] < +0.5.