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Context. The central molecular zone (CMZ) is a similar to 200 pc region around the Galactic centre. The study of star formation in the central part of the Milky Way is of great interest as it provides a template for the closest galactic nuclei. Aims. We present a spectroscopic follow-up of photometrically selected young stellar object (YSO) candidates in the CMZ of the Galactic centre. Our goal is to quantify the contamination of this YSO sample by reddened giant stars with circumstellar envelopes and to determine the star formation rate (SFR) in the CMZ. Methods. We obtained KMOS low-resolution near-infrared spectra (R similar to 4000) between 2.0 and 2.5 mu m of sources, many of which have been previously identified by mid-infrared photometric criteria as massive YSOs in the Galactic centre. Our final sample consists of 91 stars with good signal-to-noise ratio. We separated YSOs from cool late-type stars based on spectral features of CO and Br gamma at 2.3 mu m and 2.16 mu m, respectively. We made use of spectral energy distribution (SED) model fits to the observed photometric data points from 1.25 to 24 mu m to estimate approximate masses for the YSOs. Results. Using the spectroscopically identified YSOs in our sample, we confirm that existing colour-colour diagrams and colour-magnitude diagrams are unable to efficiently separate YSOs and cool late-type stars. In addition, we define a new colour-colour criterion that separates YSOs from cool late-type stars in the H - K-S vs. H-[8.0] diagram. We use this new criterion to identify YSO candidates in the vertical bar l vertical bar < 1.5, vertical bar b vertical bar < 0.5 region and use model SED fits to estimate their approximate masses. By assuming an appropriate initial mass function (IMF) and extrapolating the stellar IMF down to lower masses, we determine a SFR of similar to 0.046 +/- 0.026 M-circle dot yr (1) assuming an average age of 0.75 +/- 0.25 Myr for the YSOs. This value is lower than estimates found using the YSO counting method in the literature. Conclusions. Our SFR estimate in the CMZ agrees with the previous estimates from various methods and reaffirms that star formation in the CMZ is proceeding at a lower rate than predicted by various star forming models.© ESO, 2018. ; G.N. and M.S. acknowledges the Programme National de Cosmologie et Galaxies (PNCG) of CNRS/INSU, France, for financial support. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement No. [614922]. ; Peer reviewed

We study the relationship between age, metallicity, and α-enhancement of FGK stars in the Galactic disk. The results are based upon the analysis of high-resolution UVES spectra from the Gaia-ESO large stellar survey. We explore the limitations of the observed dataset, i.e. the accuracy of stellar parameters and the selection effects that are caused by the photometric target preselection. We find that the colour and magnitude cuts in the survey suppress old metal-rich stars and young metal-poor stars. This suppression may be as high as 97% in some regions of the age-metallicity relationship. The dataset consists of 144 stars with a wide range of ages from 0.5 Gyr to 13.5 Gyr, Galactocentric distances from 6 kpcto 9.5 kpc, and vertical distances from the plane 0 9 Gyr is not as small as advocated by some other studies. In agreement with earlier work, we find that radial abundance gradients change as a function of vertical distance from the plane. The [Mg/Fe] gradient steepens and becomes negative. In addition, we show that the inner disk is not only more α-rich compared to the outer disk, but also older, as traced independently by the ages and Mg abundances of stars. ; This work was partly supported by the European Union FP7 programme through ERC grant number 320360. AS is supported by the MICINN grant AYA2011-24704 and by the ESF EUROCORES Programme EuroGENESIS (MICINN grant EUI2009-04170). The results presented here benefited from discussions held during Gaia-ESO workshops and conferences supported by the ESF (European Science Foundation) through the GREAT (Gaia Research ...