Bibcode
DOI
Vazdekis, A.; Arimoto, N.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 525, Issue 1, pp. 144-152.
Advertised on:
11
1999
Journal
Citations
124
Refereed citations
99
Description
We derive new spectral Hγ index definitions that are robust age
indicators for old and relatively old stellar populations and therefore
have great potential for solving the age-metallicity degeneracy of
galaxy spectra. To study this feature as a function of age, metallicity,
and resolution, we have used a new spectral synthesis model that
predicts spectral energy distributions of single-age, single-metallicity
stellar populations at resolution FWHM~1.8 Å (which can be
smoothed to different resolutions), allowing direct measurements of the
equivalent widths of particular absorption features. We show that
Hγ's strong age-disentangling power is due to a compensating
effect: at a specified age, Hγ strengthens with metallicity owing
to an adjacent metallic absorption, but on the other hand, the adopted
pseudocontinua are depressed by the effects of strong neighboring Fe I
lines on both sides of Hγ. Despite the fact that this effect
depends strongly on the adopted resolution and galaxy velocity
dispersion σ, we propose a system of indicators that are
completely insensitive to metallicity and stable against resolution,
allowing the study of galaxies up to σ~300 km s-1. An
extensive analysis of the characteristics of these indices indicates
that observational spectra of very high signal-to-noise ratio and
relatively high dispersion are required to gain this unprecedented
age-discriminating power. Once such spectra are obtained, accurate and
reliable estimates for the luminosity-weighted average stellar ages of
these galaxies will become possible for the first time, without
assessing their metallicities. We measured this index for two globular
clusters, a number of low-luminosity elliptical galaxies, and a standard
S0 galaxy. We find a large spread in the average stellar ages of a
sample of low-luminosity ellipticals. In particular, these indices yield
4 Gyr for M32. This value is in excellent agreement with the age
provided by the extraordinary fit to the full spectrum of this galaxy
that we achieve in this paper.