A&A 426, 619–630 (2004) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20041136 & c ESO 2004 Astrophysics C, S, Zn and Cu abundances in planet-harbouring stars, A. Ecuvillon1, G. Israelian1,N.C.Santos2,3, M. Mayor3, V. Villar4, and G. Bihain1 1 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Centro de Astronomia e Astrofisica de Universidade de Lisboa, Observatorio Astronomico de Lisboa, Tapada de Ajuda, 1349-018 Lisboa, Portugal 3 Observatoire de Genève, 51 ch. des Maillettes, 1290 Sauverny, Switzerland 4 Departamento de Astrofísica, Fac. de Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain Received 21 April 2004 / Accepted 17 June 2004 Abstract. We present a detailed and uniform study of C, S, Zn and Cu abundances in a large set of planet host stars, as well as in a homogeneous comparison sample of solar-type dwarfs with no known planetary-mass companions. Carbon abundances were derived by EW measurement of two C optical lines, while spectral syntheses were performed for S, Zn and Cu. We investigated possible differences in the behaviours of the volatiles C, S and Zn and in the refractory Cu in targets with and without known planets in order to check possible anomalies due to the presence of planets. We found that the abundance distributions in stars with exoplanets are the high [Fe/H] extensions of the trends traced by the comparison sample. All volatile elements we studied show [X/Fe] trends decreasing with [Fe/H] in the metallicity range −0.8 < [Fe/H] < 0.5, with significantly negative slopes of −0.39 ± 0.04 and −0.35 ± 0.04 for C and S, respectively.