  The recently re-discovered open cluster Stock 2, located roughly 375 pc away
and about 400 Myr old, has the potential to be an exciting new testbed for our
understanding of stellar evolution. We present results from a spectroscopic
campaign to characterize stars near the cluster's main-sequence turnoff; our
goal is to identify candidate chemically peculiar stars among the cluster's A
stars. We obtained echelle spectra for 64 cluster members with ESPaDOnS on the
3.6-m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, Mauna Kea Observatory, USA, and for six
stars with SOPHIE on the 1.93-m telescope at the Observatoire de
Haute-Provence, France. We complemented these new observations with those of 13
high-mass cluster members from the HARPS-N archive; our overall sample is of 71
stars. We derived the fundamental parameters (Teff, log g, [M/H]) as well as
vsini for our sample using the Sliced Inverse Regression (SIR) technique, and
then used iSpec to derive individual abundances of 12 chemical species. With
these abundance determinations, we identified nine A stars with anomalous
levels of Sc, Ca, and other metallic lines. Follow-up observations of these Am
candidates with a known age can transform them into benchmarks for evolutionary
models that include atomic diffusion and help build a better understanding of
the complex interactions between macroscopic and microscopic processes in
stellar interiors.
