No Arabic abstract
We present an homogeneous set of stellar atmospheric parameters (Teff, log g, [Fe/H]) for a sample of about 700 field and cluster stars which constitute a new stellar library in the near-infrared developed for stellar population synthesis in this spectral region (8350-9020 Angstrom). Having compiled the available atmospheric data in the literature for field stars, we have found systematic deviations between the atmospheric parameters from different bibliographic references. The Soubiran, Katz & Cayrel (1998) sample of stars with very well determined fundamental parameters has been taken as our standard reference system, and other papers have been calibrated and bootstrapped against it. The obtained transformations are provided in this paper. Once most of the datasets were on the same system, final parameters were derived by performing error weighted means. Atmospheric parameters for cluster stars have also been revised and updated according to recent metallicity scales and colour-temperature relations.
Using a near-IR stellar library of 706 stars with a wide coverage of atmospheric parameters, we study the behaviour of the Ca II triplet strength in terms of effective temperature, surface gravity and metallicity. Empirical fitting functions for recently defined line-strength indices, namely CaT*, CaT and PaT, are provided. These functions can be easily implemented into stellar populations models to provide accurate predictions for integrated Ca II strengths. We also present a thorough study of the various error sources and their relation to the residuals of the derived fitting functions. Finally, the derived functional forms and the behaviour of the predicted Ca II are compared with those of previous works in the field.
We present a new stellar population synthesis model, which predicts SEDs for single-age single-metallicity stellar populations, SSPs, at resolution 1.5A (FWHM) in the spectral region of the near-IR CaII triplet feature. The main ingredient of the model is a new extensive empirical stellar spectral library presented in Cenarro et al., which is composed of more than 600 stars. Two main products of interest for stellar population analysis are presented. The first is a library of SEDs for SSPs covering a large range of ages, metallicities and different IMF types. They are well suited to model galaxy data, since the SSP spectra, with flux-calibrated response curves, can be smoothed to match the resolution of galaxy data, taking into account the internal velocity dispersion of the galaxy, allowing the user to analyze the observed spectrum in its own system. We also produce integrated absorption line indices for the same SSPs in the form of equivalent widths. We find the following behaviour for the CaII feature in old-aged SSPs: i) the CaII triplet feature does not change much with time for all metallicities for ages larger than ~3 Gyr, ii) this index shows a strong dependence with metallicity for values below [M/H] ~-0.5 and iii) for larger metallicities this feature does not show a significant dependence either on age or on the metallicity, being more sensitive to changes in the slope of power-like IMF shapes. The SSP spectra have been calibrated with measurements for globular clusters. Fitting the models to two early-type galaxies of different luminosities, we find that the CaII measurements cannot be fitted unless a very dwarf-dominated IMF is imposed, or if the Ca abundance is even lower than the Fe abundance.
We present measurements of the near-infrared Calcium II triplet (CaT, CaT*), Paschen (PaT) and Magnesium (MgI) indices for a well-studied sample of 19 bulges of early to intermediate spiral galaxies. We find that both the CaT* and CaT indices decrease with central velocity dispersion (sigma) with small scatter. This dependence is similar to that recently found by Cenarro (2002) for elliptical galaxies, implying an uniform CaT* -- sigma relation that applies to galaxies from ellipticals to intermediate-type spirals. The decrease of CaT and CaT* with sigma contrasts with the well-known increase of another alpha-element index, Mg_2, with sigma. We discuss the role of Ca underabundance ([Ca/Fe]<0) and IMF variations in the onset of the observed relations.
(ABRIDGED) Context. The line strength of the Ca II triplet (CaT) lines are a proxy to measure metallicity from individual stellar spectra of bright red giant stars. It is a mandatory step to remove the magnitude (proxy for gravity, temperature and luminosity) dependence from the equivalent width (EW) of the lines before converting them into metallicities. The working empirical procedure used for decades is to use the relative magnitude with respect to the horizontal branch level. Aims. The V filter is broadly adopted as the reference magnitude, although a few works have used different filters (I and Ks, for example). In this work we investigate the dependence of the CaT calibration using griz filters from the DECam and the GMOS, G from Gaia, BVI filters from the MCPS, YJKs filters from VIRCAM. We use as a reference FORS2 V filter used in the original analysis of the sample. Methods. Red giant stars from clusters with known metallicity and available CaT equivalent widths are used as reference. Public photometric catalogues are taken from SMASH DR2, VMC, Gaia, MCPS surveys plus VISCACHA-GMOS data, for a selection of Small Magellanic Cloud clusters. The slopes are fitted using two and three lines to be applicable to most of the metallicity scales. Results. The magnitude dependence of the CaT EWs is well described by a linear relation using any filter analysed in this work. The slope increases with wavelength of the filters. The zero point (a.k.a. reduced equivalent width), that is the metallicity indicator, remains the same. Conclusions. If the same line profile function is used with the same bandpasses and continuum regions, and the total EW comes from the same number of lines (2 or 3), then the reduced EW is the same regardless the filter used. Therefore, any filter can be used to convert the CaT equivalent widths into metallicity for a given CaT calibration.
We extend our previous calibration of the infrared Ca II triplet as metallicity indicator to the metal-poor regime by including observations of 55 field stars with [Fe/H] down to -4.0 dex. While we previously solved the saturation at high-metallicity using a combination of a Lorentzian plus a Gaussian to reproduce the line profiles, in this paper we address the non-linearity at low-metallicity following the suggestion of Starkenburg et al 2010 of adding two non-linear terms to the relation among the [Fe/H], luminosity, and strength of the Calcium triplet lines. Our calibration thus extends from -4.0 to +0.5 in metallicity and is presented using four different luminosity indicators: V-V_{HB}, M_V, M_I, and M_K. The calibration obtained in this paper results in a tight correlation between [Fe/H] abundances measured from high resolution spectra and [Fe/H] values derived from the CaT, over the whole metallicity range covered.