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Register a new userImpact of the low solar abundance on the ages of globular clusters
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We present the result of our investigation on the impact of the low Solar abundance of Asplund and collaborators (2004) on the derived ages for the oldest star clusters based on isochrone fittings. We have constructed new stellar models and corresponding isochrones using this new solar mixture with a proper Solar calibration. We have found that the use of the Asplund et al. (2004) metallicity causes the typical ages for old globular clusters in the Milky Way to be increased roughly by 10%. Although this may appear small, it has a significant impact on the interpretation for the formation epoch of Milky Way globular clusters. The Asplund et al. (2004) abundance may not necessarily threaten the current concordance cosmology but would suggest that Milky Way globular clusters formed before the reionization and before the main galaxy body starts to build up. This is in contrast to the current understanding on the galaxy formation.
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Globular clusters are the oldest conglomerates of stars in our Galaxy and can be useful laboratories to test theories from stellar evolution to cosmology. In this paper, we present a new method to estimate the absolute age of a globular cluster from observations of its brown dwarfs. The transition region between the end of the main sequence and the brown dwarf regime is characterized by a dearth of objects as function of magnitude. The brightest of the cooling brown dwarfs is easily identified by an increase in density in the color-magnitude diagram as you go fainter in magnitudes, and these brightest brown dwarfs get fainter with age. By identifying the brightest brown dwarfs, it is thus possible to determine the age of a globular cluster within a 1 Gyr precision with four-sigma confidence. This new method, which is independent of current methods of age estimation and which does not rely on the knowledge of the clusters distance from Earth, will become feasible thanks to the high spatial resolution and incredible infrared sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope.
We present new analysis of 11 intermediate-age (1-2 Gyr) star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud based on Hubble Space Telescope imaging data. Seven of the clusters feature main sequence turnoff (MSTO) regions that are wider than can be accounted for by a simple stellar population, whereas their red giant branches indicate a single value of [Fe/H]. The star clusters cover a range in present-day mass from about 1E4 to 2E5 solar masses. We compare radial distributions of stars in the upper and lower parts of the MSTO region, and calculate cluster masses and escape velocities from the present time back to a cluster age of 10 Myr. Our main result is that for all clusters in our sample with estimated escape velocities > 15 km/s at an age of 10 Myr, the stars in the brightest half of the MSTO region are significantly more centrally concentrated than the stars in the faintest half AND more massive red giant branch and asymptotic giant branch stars. This is not the case for clusters with escape velocities < 10 km/s at an age of 10 Myr. We argue that the wide MSTO region of such clusters is mainly caused by to a 200 - 500 Myr range in the ages of cluster stars due to extended star formation within the cluster from material shed by first-generation stars featuring slow stellar winds. Dilution of this enriched material by accretion of ambient interstellar matter is deemed plausible if the spread of [Fe/H] in this ambient gas was very small when the second-generation stars were formed in the cluster.
One crucial piece of information to study the origin of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters, is the range of initial helium abundances $Delta{Y}$ amongst the sub-populations hosted by each cluster. These estimates are commonly obtained by measuring the width in colour of the unevolved main sequence in an optical colour-magnitude-diagram. The measured colour spread is then compared with predictions from theoretical stellar isochrones with varying initial He abundances, to determine $Delta{Y}$. The availability of UV/optical magnitudes thanks to the {sl HST UV Legacy Survey of Galactic GCs} project, will allow the homogeneous determination of $Delta{Y}$ for a large Galactic globular cluster sample. From a theoretical point of view, accurate UV CMDs can efficiently disentangle the various sub-populations, and main sequence colour differences in the ACS $F606W-(F606W-F814W)$ diagram allow an estimate of $Delta{Y}$. We demonstrate that from a theoretical perspective the ($F606W-F814W$) colour is an extremely reliable He-abundance indicator. The derivative d$Y$/d($F606W-F814W$), computed at a fixed luminosity along the unevolved main sequence, is largely insensitive to the physical assumptions made in stellar model computations, being more sensitive to the choice of the bolometric correction scale, and is only slightly dependent on the adopted set of stellar models. From a theoretical point of view the ($F606W-F814W$) colour width of the cluster main sequence is therefore a robust diagnostic of the $Delta{Y}$ range.
The early evolution of a dense young star cluster (YSC) depends on the intricate connection between stellar evolution and dynamical processes. Thus, N-body simulations of YSCs must account for both aspects. We discuss N-body simulations of YSCs with three different metallicities (Z=0.01, 0.1 and 1 Zsun), including metallicity-dependent stellar evolution recipes and metallicity-dependent prescriptions for stellar winds and remnant formation. We show that mass-loss by stellar winds influences the reversal of core collapse. In particular, the post-collapse expansion of the core is faster in metal-rich YSCs than in metal-poor YSCs, because the former lose more mass (through stellar winds) than the latter. As a consequence, the half-mass radius expands more in metal-poor YSCs. We also discuss how these findings depend on the total mass and on the virial radius of the YSC. These results give us a clue to understand the early evolution of YSCs with different metallicity.
We study the spherical, top-hat collapse model for a mixed dark matter model including cold dark matter (CDM) and massive neutrinos of mass scales ranging from m_nu= 0.05 to a few 0.1eV, the range of lower- and upper-bounds implied from the neutrino oscillation experiments and the cosmological constraints. To develop this model, we properly take into account relative differences between the density perturbation amplitudes of different components (radiation, baryon, CDM and neutrinos) around the top-hat CDM overdensity region assuming the adiabatic initial conditions. Furthermore, we solve the linearized Boltzmann hierarchy equations to obtain time evolution of the lineariezed neutrino perturbations, yet including the effect of nonlinear gravitational potential due to the nonlinear CDM and baryon overdensities in the late stage. We find that the presence of massive neutrinos slows down the collapse of CDM (plus baryon) overdensity, however, that the neutrinos cannot fully catch up with the the nonlinear CDM perturbation due to its large free-streaming velocity for the ranges of neutrino masses and halo masses we consider. We find that, just like CDM models, the collapse time of CDM overdensity is well monitored by the linear-theory extrapolated overdensity of CDM plus baryon perturbation, smoothed with a given halo mass scale, if taking into account the suppression effect of the massive neutrinos on the linear growth rate. Using these findings, we argue that the presence of massive neutrinos of mass scales 0.05 or 0.1eV may cause a significant decrease in the abundance of massive halos compared to the model without the massive neutrinos; e.g., by 25% or factor 2, respectively, for halos with 10^15Ms and at z=1.
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