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Register a new userParameter Estimation for Scarce Stellar Populations
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Added by
Bernardo Cervantes Sodi
Publication date
2019
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We present a Bayesian method to determine simultaneously the age, metallicity, distance modulus, and interstellar reddening by dust of any resolved stellar population, by comparing the observed and synthetic color magnitude diagrams on a star by star basis, with no need to bin the data into a carefully selected magnitude grid. We test the method with mock stellar populations, and show that it works correctly even for scarce stellar populations with only one or two hundred stars above the main sequence turn off. If the population is the result of two star formation bursts, we can infer the contribution of each event to the total stellar population. The code works automatically and has already been used to study massive amounts of Magellanic clouds photometric data. In this paper we analyze in detail three Large Magellanic Cloud star clusters and 6 Ultra Faint Dwarf Galaxies. For these galaxies we recover physical parameters in agreement with those quoted in the literature, age $sim13.7$ Gyr and a very low metallicity $log,Zsim-4$. Searching for multiple populations in these galaxies, we find, at a very low significance level, signs of a double stellar population for Ursa Major I: a dominant old population and a younger one which contributes $sim25$% of the stars, in agreement with independent results from other authors.
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Determining the properties of old stellar populations (those with age >1 Gyr) has long involved the comparison of their integrated light, either in the form of photometry or spectroscopic indexes, with empirical or synthetic templates. Here we reevaluate the properties of old stellar populations using a new set of stellar population synthesis models, designed to incorporate the effects of binary stellar evolution pathways as a function of stellar mass and age. We find that single-aged stellar population models incorporating binary stars, as well as new stellar evolution and atmosphere models, can reproduce the colours and spectral indices observed in both globular clusters and quiescent galaxies. The best fitting model populations are often younger than those derived from older spectral synthesis models, and may also lie at slightly higher metallicities.
We present a new theoretical population synthesis model (the Galaxy Model) to examine and deal with large amounts of data from surveys of the Milky Way and to decipher the present and past structure and history of our own Galaxy. We assume the Galaxy to consist of a superposition of many composite stellar populations belonging to the thin and thick disks, the stellar halo and the bulge, and to be surrounded by a single dark matter halo component. A global model for the Milky Ways gravitational potential is built up self-consistently with the density profiles from the Poisson equation. In turn, these density profiles are used to generate synthetic probability distribution functions (PDFs) for the distribution of stars in colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs). Finally, the gravitational potential is used to constrain the stellar kinematics by means of the moment method on a (perturbed)-distribution function. Spiral arms perturb the axisymmetric disk distribution functions in the linear response framework of density-wave theory where we present an analytical formula of the so-called `reduction factor using Hypergeometric functions. Finally, we consider an analytical non-axisymmetric model of extinction and an algorithm based on the concept of probability distribution function to handle colour magnitude diagrams with a large number of stars. A genetic algorithm is presented to investigate both the photometric and kinematic parameter space. This galaxy model represents the natural framework to reconstruct the structure of the Milky Way from the heterogeneous data set of surveys such as Gaia-ESO, SEGUE, APOGEE2, RAVE and the Gaia mission.
The evolution of AGB stars is notoriously complex. The confrontation of AGB population models with observed stellar populations is a useful alternative to the detailed study of individual stars in efforts to converge towards a reliable evolution theory. I review here the impact of studies of star clusters on AGB models and AGB population synthesis, deliberately leaving out any more complex stellar populations. Over the last 10 years, despite much effort, the absolute uncertainties in the predictions of the light emitted by intermediate age populations have not been reduced to a satisfactory level. Observational sample definitions, as well as the combination of the natural variance in AGB properties with small number statistics, are largely responsible for this situation. There is hope that the constraints may soon become strong enough, thanks to large unbiased surveys of star clusters, resolved colour-magnitude diagrams, and new analysis methods that can account for the stochastic nature of AGB populations in clusters.
We investigate the precision of the ages and metallicities of 21,000 mock simple stellar populations (SSPs) determined through full-spectrum fitting. The mock SSPs cover an age range of 6.8 $<$ log (age/yr) $<$ 10.2, for three wavelength ranges in the optical regime, using both Padova and MIST isochrone models. Random noise is added to the model spectra to achieve S/N ratios between 10 to 100 per wavelength pixel. We find that for S/N $geq$ 50, this technique can yield ages of SSPs to an overall precision of $Delta,mbox{log(age/yr)} sim 0.1$ for ages in the ranges 7.0 $leq$ log (age/yr) $leq$ 8.3 and 8.9 $leq$ log (age/yr) $leq$ 9.4. For the age ranges of 8.3 $leq$ log (age/yr) $leq$ 8.9 and log (age/yr) $geq$ 9.5, which have significant flux contributions from asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red giant branch (RGB) stars, respectively, the age uncertainty rises to about $pm 0.3$ dex. The precision of age and metallicity estimation using this method depends significantly on the S/N and the wavelength range used in the fitting. We quantify the systematic differences in age predicted by the MIST and Padova isochrone models, due to their different assumptions about stellar physics in various important (i.e., luminous) phases of stellar evolution, which needs to be taken in consideration when comparing ages of star clusters obtained using these popular models. Knowing the strengths and limitations of this technique is crucial in interpreting the results obtained for real star clusters and for deciding the optimal instrument setup before performing the observations.
We explore the properties of selected mid-ultraviolet (1900-3200 angstrom) spectroscopic indices of simple stellar populations (SSPs). We incorporate the high resolution UVBLUE stellar spectral library into an evolutionary population synthesis code, based on the most recent Padova isochrones. We analyze the trends of UV indices with respect to age and chemical composition. As a first test against observations, we compare our results with the empirical mid-UV spectral indices of Galactic globular clusters, observed with the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). We find that synthetic indices exhibit a variety of properties, the main one being the slight age sensitivity of most of them for ages>2 Gyr. However, for high metallicity, two indices, Fe II 2332 and Fe II 2402, display a remarkably different pattern, with a sharp increase within the first two Gyr and, thereafter, a rapid decline. These indices clearly mark the presence of young (~1 Gyr) metal rich (Z > Z_sun) stellar populations. We complement existing UV indices of Galactic globular clusters with new measurements, and carefully identify a sub-sample of ten indices suitable for comparison with theoretical models. The comparison shows a fair agreement and, in particular, the strong trend of the indices with metallicity is well reproduced. We also discuss the main improvements that should be considered in future modelling concerning, among others, the effects of alpha-enhancement in the spectral energy distributions.
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