359 research outputs found
Stellar Populations in Bulges
We present line strengths in the bulges and inner disks of 38 galaxies in the
local universe, including several galaxies whose bulges were previously
identified as being disk-like in their colors or kinematics, to see if their
spectral properties reveal evidence for secular evolution. We find that red
bulges of all Hubble types are similar to luminous ellipticals in their central
stellar populations. They have large luminosity-weighted ages, metallicities,
and alpha/Fe ratios. Blue bulges can be separated into a metal-poor class that
is restricted to late-types with small velocity dispersion and a young,
metal-rich class that includes all Hubble types and velocity dispersions.
Luminosity-weighted metallicities and alpha/Fe ratios are sensitive to central
velocity dispersion and maximum disk rotational velocity. Red bulges and
ellipticals follow the same scaling relations. We see differences in some
scaling relations between blue and red bulges and between bulges of barred and
unbarred galaxies. Most bulges have decreasing metallicity with increasing
radius; galaxies with larger central metallicities have steeper gradients.
Where positive age gradients (with the central regions being younger) are
present, they are invariably in barred galaxies. The metallicities of bulges
are correlated with those of their disks. While this and the differences
between barred and unbarred galaxies suggest that secular evolution cannot be
ignored, our results are generally consistent with the hypothesis that mergers
have been the dominant mechanism responsible for bulge formation.Comment: 30 pages, 21 figures; submitted to MNRA
Metallicity Distribution Functions of Four Local Group dwarf galaxies
We present stellar metallicities in Leo I, Leo II, IC 1613, and Phoenix dwarf
galaxies derived from medium (F390M) and broad (F555W, F814W) band photometry
using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument aboard the Hubble Space
Telescope. We measured metallicity distribution functions (MDFs) in two ways,
1) matching stars to isochrones in color-color diagrams, and 2) solving for the
best linear combination of synthetic populations to match the observed
color-color diagram. The synthetic technique reduces the effect of photometric
scatter, and produces MDFs 30-50 % narrower than the MDFs produced from
individually matched stars. We fit the synthetic and individual MDFs to
analytical chemical evolution models (CEM) to quantify the enrichment and the
effect of gas flows within the galaxies. Additionally, we measure stellar
metallicity gradients in Leo I and II. For IC 1613 and Phoenix our data do not
have the radial extent to confirm a metallicity gradient for either galaxy.
We find the MDF of Leo I (dwarf spheroidal) to be very peaked with a steep
metal rich cutoff and an extended metal poor tail, while Leo II (dwarf
spheroidal), Phoenix (dwarf transition) and IC 1613 (dwarf irregular) have
wider, less peaked MDFs than Leo I. A simple CEM is not the best fit for any of
our galaxies, therefore we also fit the `Best Accretion Model' of Lynden-Bell
1975. For Leo II, IC 1613 and Phoenix we find similar accretion parameters for
the CEM, even though they all have different effective yields, masses, star
formation histories and morphologies. We suggest that the dynamical history of
a galaxy is reflected in the MDF, where broad MDFs are seen in galaxies that
have chemically evolved in relative isolation and narrowly peaked MDFs are seen
in galaxies that have experienced more complicated dynamical interactions
concurrent with their chemical evolution.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, accepted in A
Measuring Sizes of Marginally Resolved Young Globular Clusters with HST
We present a method to derive sizes of marginally resolved star clusters from
HST/WFPC2 observations by fitting King models to observations. We describe
results on both simulated images and on observations of young compact clusters
in NGC 3597 and NGC 1275. From the simulations, we find that we can measure
King model concentrations (c) to an accuracy of about a factor of two for all
combinations of c and King radius (r_0) of interest if the data have high S/N
(>~ 500 for the integrated brightness). If the concentration is accurately
measured, we can measure the King radius accurately. For lower S/N, marginally
resolved King profiles suffer from a degeneracy; different values of the
concentration give different r_0 but have comparable reduced chi-squared
values. In this case, neither the core radius nor the concentration can be
constrained individually, but the half-light radius can be recovered
accurately.
In NGC 3597, we can only differentiate between concentrations for the very
brightest clusters; these suggest a concentration of ~ 2. Assuming a
concentration of 2 for the rest of the objects, we find an average King radius
for the clusters in NGC 3597 of 0.7 pc, while the clusters in NGC 1275 have an
average radius of 1.1 pc. These are similar to the average core radii for
Galactic globular clusters, 0.92 pc. We find average half-light radii of 5.4 pc
and 6.2 pc for the young clusters in NGC 3597 and NGC 1275, respectively, while
the average half-light radii of Galactic globulars is 3.4 pc. The spread in the
derived radial parameters in each cluster system is comparable to that observed
in the Galactic globular cluster system.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in PAS
The stellar population structure of the Galactic disk
The spatial structure of stellar populations with different chemical
abundances in the Milky Way contains a wealth of information on Galactic
evolution over cosmic time. We use data on 14,699 red-clump stars from the
APOGEE survey, covering 4 kpc <~ R <~ 15 kpc, to determine the structure of
mono-abundance populations (MAPs)---stars in narrow bins in [a/Fe] and
[Fe/H]---accounting for the complex effects of the APOGEE selection function
and the spatially-variable dust obscuration. We determine that all MAPs with
enhanced [a/Fe] are centrally concentrated and are well-described as
exponentials with a scale length of 2.2+/-0.2 kpc over the whole radial range
of the disk. We discover that the surface-density profiles of low-[a/Fe] MAPs
are complex: they do not monotonically decrease outwards, but rather display a
peak radius ranging from ~5 kpc to ~13 kpc at low [Fe/H]. The extensive radial
coverage of the data allows us to measure radial trends in the thickness of
each MAP. While high-[a/Fe] MAPs have constant scale heights, low-[a/Fe] MAPs
flare. We confirm, now with high-precision abundances, previous results that
each MAP contains only a single vertical scale height and that low-[Fe/H],
low-[a/Fe] and high-[Fe/H], high-[a/Fe] MAPs have intermediate (h_Z~300 to 600
pc) scale heights that smoothly bridge the traditional thin- and thick-disk
divide. That the high-[a/Fe], thick disk components do not flare is strong
evidence against their thickness being caused by radial migration. The
correspondence between the radial structure and chemical-enrichment age of
stellar populations is clear confirmation of the inside-out growth of galactic
disks. The details of these relations will constrain the variety of physical
conditions under which stars form throughout the MW disk.Comment: Code available at https://github.com/jobovy/apogee-map
Comparing the Ancient Star Formation Histories of the Magellanic Clouds
We present preliminary results from a new HST archival program aimed at
tightly constraining the ancient (>4 Gyr ago) star formation histories (SFHs)
of the field populations of the SMC and LMC. We demonstrate the quality of the
archival data by constructing HST/WFPC2-based color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs;
M_{F555W} ~ +8) for 7 spatially diverse fields in the SMC and 8 fields in the
LMC. The HST-based CMDs are >2 magnitudes deeper than any from ground based
observations, and are particularly superior in high surface brightness regions,
e.g., the LMC bar, which contain a significant fraction of star formation and
are crowding limited from ground based observations. To minimize systematic
uncertainties, we derive the SFH of each field using an identical maximum
likelihood CMD fitting technique. We then compute an approximate mass weighted
average SFH for each galaxy. We find that both galaxies lack a dominant burst
of early star formation, which suggests either a suppression or an
under-fueling of early star formation. From 10-12 Gyr ago, the LMC experienced
a period of enhanced stellar mass growth relative to the SMC. Similar to some
previous studies, we find two notable peaks in the SFH of the SMC at ~4.5 and 9
Gyr ago, which could be due to repeated close passages with the LMC, implying
an interaction history that has persisted for at least 9 Gyr. We find little
evidence for strong periodic behavior in the lifetime SFHs of both MCs,
suggesting that repeated encounters with the Milky Way are unlikely. Beginning
~3.5 Gyr ago, both galaxies show increases in their SFHs, in agreement with
previous studies, and thereafter, track each other remarkably well. (abridged)Comment: 9 pages, 5 Figures, Accepted for Publication in MNRA
Stellar Populations in the Phoenix Dwarf (dIrr/dSph) Galaxy as Observed by HST/WFPC2
We present HST/WFPC2 photometry of the central regions of the Phoenix dwarf.
Accurate photometry allows us to: 1) confirm the existence of the horizontal
branch previously detected by ground-based observations, and use it to
determine a distance to Phoenix, 2) clearly detect the existence of multiple
ages in the stellar population of Phoenix, 3) determine a mean metallicity of
the old red giant branch stars in Phoenix, and suggest that Phoenix has evolved
chemically over its lifetime, 4) extract a rough star formation history for the
central regions which suggests that Phoenix has been forming stars roughly
continuously over its entire lifetime.Comment: Accepted by AJ, 22 pages including 6 figures + 1 figure in JPEG
forma
Imprints of radial migration on the Milky Way’s metallicity distribution functions
Recent analysis of the SDSS-III/Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) Data Release 12 stellar catalog has revealed that the Milky Way’s (MW) metallicity distribution function (MDF) changes shape as a function of radius, transitioning from being negatively skewed at small Galactocentric radii to positively skewed at large Galactocentric radii. Using a high-resolution, N-body+SPH simulation, we show that the changing skewness arises from radial migration—metal-rich stars form in the inner disk and subsequently migrate to the metal-poorer outer disk. These migrated stars represent a large fraction (>50%) of the stars in the outer disk; they populate the high-metallicity tail of the MDFs and are, in general, more metal-rich than the surrounding outer disk gas. The simulation also reproduces another surprising APOGEE result: the spatially invariant high-[α/Fe] MDFs. This arises in the simulation from the migration of a population formed within a narrow range of radii (3.2 ±1.2 kpc) and time (8.8 ± 0.6 Gyr ago), rather than from spatially extended star formation in a homogeneous medium at early times. These results point toward the crucial role radial migration has played in shaping our MW
CDM-Variant Cosmological Models - I: Simulations and Preliminary Comparisons
We present two matched sets of five simulations each, covering five presently
favored simple modifications to the standard cold dark matter (CDM) scenario.
One simulation suite, with a linear box size of 75 Mpc/h, is designed for high
resolution and good statistics on the group/poor cluster scale, and the other,
with a box size of 300 Mpc/h, is designed for good rich cluster statistics. All
runs had 57 million cold particles, and models with massive neutrinos had an
additional 113 million hot particles. We consider separately models with
massive neutrinos, tilt, curvature, and a nonzero cosmological constant in
addition to the standard CDM model. We find that our tilted
Omega+Omega_Lambda=1 (TLCDM) model produces too much small-scale power by a
factor of ~3, and our open Lambda=0 (OCDM) model also exceeds observed
small-scale power by a factor of 2. In addition, we take advantage of the large
dynamic range in detectable halo masses our simulations allow to check the
shape of the Press-Schechter approximation. We find good fits at cluster masses
for delta_c=1.27--1.35 for a Gaussian filter and delta_c=1.57--1.73 for a
tophat filter. However, Press-Schechter overpredicts the number density of
halos compared to the simulations in the high resolution suite by a weakly
cosmology-dependent factor of 1.5--2 at galaxy and group masses, which cannot
be fixed by adjusting delta_c within reasonable bounds. An appendix generalizes
the spherical collapse model to any isotropic cosmology.Comment: 18 pages Latex using Monthly Notices style, with 13 inlined EPS
figures. This version matches the one accepted by MNRAS. The appendix has
been removed and may now be found instead at
http://fozzie.gsfc.nasa.gov/thesis/appendixC.ps.g
Chemical Abundances in Field Red Giants from High-Resolution H-Band Spectra using the APOGEE Spectral Linelist
High-resolution H-band spectra of five bright field K, M, and MS giants,
obtained from the archives of the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) Fourier
Transform Spectrometer (FTS), are analyzed to determine chemical abundances of
16 elements. The abundances were derived via spectrum synthesis using the
detailed linelist prepared for the SDSS III Apache Point Galactic Evolution
Experiment (APOGEE), which is a high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic
survey to derive detailed chemical abundance distributions and precise radial
velocities for 100,000 red giants sampling all Galactic stellar populations.
Measured chemical abundances include the cosmochemically important isotopes
12C, 13C, 14N, and 16O, along with Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co,
Ni, and Cu. A comparison of the abundances derived here with published values
for these stars reveals consistent results to ~0.1 dex. The APOGEE spectral
region and linelist is, thus, well-suited for probing both Galactic chemical
evolution, as well as internal nucleosynthesis and mixing in populations of red
giants using high-resolution spectroscopy.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 42 pages, 12
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