Confidence levels of evolutionary synthesis models

Cerviño, M.; Luridiana, V.; Castander, F. J.
Bibliographical reference

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 360, p.L5-L8

Advertised on:
8
2000
Number of authors
3
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
62
Refereed citations
48
Description
The stochastic nature of the IMF in young stellar clusters implies that clusters of the same mass and age do not present the same unique values of their observed parameters. Instead they follow a distribution. We address the study of such distributions, parameterised in terms of their confidence limits, in evolutionary synthesis models. These confidence limits can be understood as the inherent uncertainties of the synthesis models. Here we concentrate on some parameters such as EW(Hβ) in emission. For instance, we show that for a cluster where 105 M&sun; have been transformed into stars, the dispersion of EW(Hβ) is about 18% within the 90% confidence levels at ages between 3.5 and 5 Myrs.