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Register a new userFORS2/VLT survey of Milky Way globular clusters II. Fe and Mg abundances of 51 Milky Way globular clusters on a homogeneous scale
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(ABRIDGED) Globular clusters trace the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and surrounding galaxies, and outline their chemical enrichment history. To accomplish these tasks it is important to have large samples of clusters with homogeneous data and analysis to derive kinematics, chemical abundances, ages and locations. We obtain homogeneous metallicities and alpha-element enhancement for over 800 red giant stars in 51 Galactic bulge, disc, and halo globular clusters that are among the most distant and/or highly reddened in the Galaxys globular cluster system. We observed R ~ 2000 spectra in the wavelength interval 456-586 nm and applied full spectrum fitting technique. We compared the mean abundances of all clusters with previous work and with field stars. We used the relation between mean metallicity and horizontal branch morphology defined by all clusters to select outliers for discussion. We find our metallicities are comparable to those derived from high-resolution data to within sigma = 0.08 dex over the interval -2.5 < [Fe/H] < 0.0. We also find that the distribution of [Mg/Fe] and [alpha/Fe] with [Fe/H] for the 51 clusters follows the general trend exhibited by field stars. It is the first time that the following clusters have been included in a large sample of homogeneous stellar spectroscopic observations and metallicity derivation: BH 176, Djorg 2, Pal 10, NGC 6426, Lynga 7, and Terzan 8. In particular, only photometric metallicities were available previously for the first three clusters, and the available metallicity for NGC 6426 was based on integrated spectroscopy and photometry. Two other clusters, HP 1 and NGC 6558, are confirmed as candidates for the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way. The technique used here can also be applied to globular cluster systems in nearby galaxies with current instruments and to distant galaxies with the advent of ELTs.
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We report on the extent of the effects of the Milky Ways gravitational field in shaping the structural parameters and internal dynamics of its globular cluster population. We make use of a homogeneous, up-to-date data set with kinematics, structural properties, current and initial masses of 156 globular clusters. In general, cluster radii increase as the Milky Way potential weakens; with the core and Jacobi radii being those which increase at the slowest and fastest rate respectively. We interpret this result as the innermost regions of globular clusters being less sensitive to changes in the tidal forces with the Galactocentric distance. The Milky Ways gravitational field also seems to have differentially accelerated the internal dynamical evolution of individual clusters, with those toward the bulge appearing dynamically older. Finally we find a sub-population consisting of both compact and extended globular clusters (as defined by their rh/rJ ratio) beyond 8 kpc that appear to have lost a large fraction of their initial mass lost via disruption. Moreover, we identify a third group with rh/rJ > 0.4, which have lost an even larger fraction of their initial mass by disruption. In both cases the high fraction of mass lost is likely due to their large orbital eccentricities and inclination angles, which lead to them experiencing more tidal shocks at perigalacticon and during disc crossings. Comparing the structural and orbital parameters of individual clusters allows for constraints to be placed on whether or not their evolution was relaxation or tidally dominated.
Here we examine the Milky Ways GC system to estimate the fraction of accreted versus in situ formed GCs. We first assemble a high quality database of ages and metallicities for 93 Milky Way GCs from literature deep colour-magnitude data. The age-metallicity relation for the Milky Ways GCs reveals two distinct tracks -- one with near constant old age of ~12.8 Gyr and the other branches to younger ages. We find that the latter young track is dominated by globular clusters associated with the Sagittarius and Canis Major dwarf galaxies. Despite being overly simplistic, its age-metallicity relation can be well represented by a simple closed box model with continuous star formation. The inferred chemical enrichment history is similar to that of the Large Magellanic Cloud, but is more enriched, at a given age, compared to the Small Magellanic Cloud. After excluding Sagittarius and Canis Major GCs, several young track GCs remain. Their horizontal branch morphologies are often red and hence classified as Young Halo objects, however they do not tend to reveal extended horizontal branches (a possible signature of an accreted remnant nucleus). Retrograde orbit GCs (a key signature of accretion) are commonly found in the young track. We also examine GCs that lie close to the Fornax-Leo-Sculptor great circle defined by several satellite galaxies. We find that several GCs are consistent with the young track and we speculate that they may have been accreted along with their host dwarf galaxy, whose nucleus may survive as a GC. Finally, we suggest that 27-47 GCs (about 1/4 of the entire system), from 6-8 dwarf galaxies, were accreted to build the Milky Way GC system we seen today.
We test the performance of our analysis technique for integrated-light spectra by applying it to seven well-studied Galactic GCs that span a wide range of metallicities. Integrated-light spectra were obtained by scanning the slit of the UVES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope across the half-light diameters of the clusters. We modelled the spectra using resolved HST colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), as well as theoretical isochrones, in combination with standard stellar atmosphere and spectral synthesis codes. The abundances of Fe, Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, and Ba were compared with literature data for individual stars in the clusters. The typical differences between iron abundances derived from our integrated-light spectra and those compiled from the literature are less than 0.1 dex. A larger difference is found for one cluster (NGC 6752), and is most likely caused primarily by stochastic fluctuations in the numbers of bright red giants within the scanned area. As expected, the alpha-elements (Ca, Ti) are enhanced by about 0.3 dex compared to the Solar-scaled composition, while the [Cr/Fe] ratios are close to Solar. When using up-to-date line lists, our [Mg/Fe] ratios also agree well with literature data. Our [Na/Fe] ratios are, on average, 0.08-0.14 dex lower than average values quoted in the literature, and our [Ba/Fe] ratios may be overestimated by 0.20-0.35 dex at the lowest metallicities. We find that analyses based on theoretical isochrones give very similar results to those based on resolved CMDs. Overall, the agreement between our integrated-light abundance measurements and the literature data is satisfactory. Refinements of the modelling procedure, such as corrections for stellar evolutionary and non-LTE effects, might further reduce some of the remaining offsets.
We explore the formation of double-compact-object binaries in Milky Way (MW) globular clusters (GCs) that may be detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We use a set of 137 fully evolved GC models that, overall, effectively match the properties of the observed GCs in the MW. We estimate that, in total, the MW GCs contain $sim21$ sources that will be detectable by LISA. These detectable sources contain all combinations of black hole (BH), neutron star, and white dwarf components. We predict $sim7$ of these sources will be BH-BH binaries. Furthermore, we show that some of these BH-BH binaries can have signal-to-noise ratios large enough to be detectable at the distance of the Andromeda galaxy or even the Virgo cluster.
We present central velocity dispersions, masses, mass to light ratios ($M/L$s), and rotation strengths for 25 Galactic globular clusters. We derive radial velocities of 1951 stars in 12 globular clusters from single order spectra taken with Hectochelle on the MMT telescope. To this sample we add an analysis of available archival data of individual stars. For the full set of data we fit King models to derive consistent dynamical parameters for the clusters. We find good agreement between single mass King models and the observed radial dispersion profiles. The large, uniform sample of dynamical masses we derive enables us to examine trends of $M/L$ with cluster mass and metallicity. The overall values of $M/L$ and the trends with mass and metallicity are consistent with existing measurements from a large sample of M31 clusters. This includes a clear trend of increasing $M/L$ with cluster mass, and lower than expected $M/L$s for the metal-rich clusters. We find no clear trend of increasing rotation with increasing cluster metallicity suggested in previous work.
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