Zinc abundances in Galactic bulge field red giants: Implications for damped Lyman-

Context. Zinc in stars is an important reference element because it is a proxy to Fe in studies of damped Lyman-α systems (DLAs), permitting a comparison of chemical evolution histories of bulge stellar populations and DLAs. In terms of nucleosynthesis, it behaves as an alpha element because it is enhanced in metal-poor stars. Abundance studies in different stellar populations can give hints to the Zn production in different sites. Aims. The aim of this work is to derive the iron-peak element Zn abundances in 56 bulge giants from high resolution spectra. These results are compared with data from other bulge samples, as well as from disk and halo stars, and damped Lyman-α systems, in order to better understand the chemical evolution in these environments. Methods. High-resolution spectra were obtained using FLAMES+UVES on the Very Large Telescope. We computed the Zn abundances using the Zn