2010ApJ...718.1416S

We present a grid of LTE atmospheric models and synthetic spectra that covers the spectral class range from mid-G to mid-K, and luminosity classes from V to III, that is dense in T_eff sampling (ΔT_eff= 62.5 K), for stars of solar metallicity and moderately metal-poor scaled solar abundance ({[{{A} /
H}]=0.0} and -0.5). All models have been computed with two choices of atomic line list: (1) the "big" line lists of Kurucz that best reproduce the broadband solar blue and near-UV f_λlevel, and (2) the "small" lists of Kurucz & Peytremann that provide the best fit to the high-resolution solar blue and near-UV spectrum. We compare our model spectral energy distributions to a sample of stars carefully selected from the large catalog of uniformly re-calibrated spectrophotometry of Burnashev with the goal of determining how the quality of fit varies with stellar parameters, especially in the historically troublesome blue and near-UV bands. We confirm that our models computed with the "big" line list recover the derived T_eff values of the PHOENIX NextGen grid, but find that the models computed with the "small" line list provide greater internal self-consistency among different spectral bands, and closer agreement with the empirical T_eff scale of Ramirez & Melendez, but not to the interferometrically derived T_effvalues of Baines et al. We find no evidence that the near-UV band discrepancy between models and observations for Arcturus (α Boo) reported in two works by Short & Hauschildt is pervasive, and that Arcturus may be peculiar in this regard.