Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2006
Abnormal line profiles and line intensities observed in Ap stars, and their deviations from thoseexpected in homogeneous atmosphere provide a strong evidence for an existance of abundancestratification. For a sample of Ap stars in the effective temperature range 7000–9500 K abundancedistributions of Mg, Si, Ca, Cr, Fe are derived from line profiles, and they are compared with thediffusion calculations. A special attention is paid to Ca distribution for which we found an evidence forthe differential stratification of Ca isotopes. Temperature and magnetic field effects on theobserved abundance distributions are discussed.