The Sixth Data Release of the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) -- II: Stellar Atmospheric Parameters, Chemical Abundances and Distances

Abstract: We present part 2 of the 6th and final Data Release (DR6 or FDR) of the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE), a magnitude-limited (9<I<12) spectroscopic survey of Galactic stars randomly selected in the southern hemisphere. The RAVE medium-resolution spectra (R~7500) cover the Ca-triplet region (8410-8795A) and span the complete time frame from the start of RAVE observations on 12 April 2003 to their completion on 4 April 2013. In the second of two publications, we present the data products derived from 518387 observations of 451783 unique stars using a suite of advanced reduction pipelines focussing on stellar atmospheric parameters, in particular purely spectroscopically derived stellar atmospheric parameters (Teff, log(g), and the overall metallicity), enhanced stellar atmospheric parameters inferred via a Bayesian pipeline using Gaia DR2 astrometric priors, and asteroseismically calibrated stellar atmospheric parameters for giant stars based on asteroseismic observations for 699 K2 stars. In addition, we provide abundances of the elements Fe, Al, and Ni, as well as an overall [alpha/Fe] ratio obtained using a new pipeline based on the GAUGUIN optimization method that is able to deal with variable signal-to-noise ratios. The RAVE DR6 catalogs are cross matched with relevant astrometric and photometric catalogs, and are complemented by orbital parameters and effective temperatures based on the infrared flux method. The data can be accessed via the RAVE Web site (http://rave-survey.org) or the Vizier database.