A standard stellar library for evolutionary synthesis - III. Metallicity calibration

By P. Westera, T. Lejeune, R. Buser, F. Cuisinier, G. Basel, Switzerland., Observat'orio Astron'omico da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, D. D. Astronomia, U. F. R. D. Janeiro and 4 more. 2001

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We extend the colour calibration of the widely used BaSeL standard stellar library (Lejeune et al. 1997, 1998) to non-solar metallicities, down to ${\rm [Fe/H]} \sim -2.0$ dex. Surprisingly, we find that at the present epoch it is virtually impossible to establish a unique calibration ofUBVRIJHKL colours in terms of stellar metallicity ${\rm [Fe/H]}$ which is consistent simultaneously with both colour-temperature relations and colour-absolute magnitude diagrams (CMDs) based on observed globular cluster photometry data and on published, currently popular standard stellar evolutionary tracks and isochrones. The problem appears to be related to the long-standing incompleteness in our understanding of convection in late-type stellar evolution, but is also due to a serious lack of relevant observational calibration data that would help resolve, or at least further significant progress towards resolving this issue. In view of the most important applications of the BaSeL library, we here propose two different metallicity calibration versions: (1) the “WLBC 99” library, which consistently matches empirical colour-temperature relations and which, therefore, should make an ideal tool for the study of individual stars; and (2), the “PADOVA 2000” library, which provides isochrones from the Padova 2000 grid (Girardi et al. [CITE]) that successfully reproduce Galactic globular-cluster colour-absolute magnitude diagrams and which thus should prove particularly useful for studies of collective phenomena in stellar populations in clusters and galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5c7c54eb58cf53ecf2d277e7d5f3cfc1b2884520

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Citations in the corpus

A library of high resolution synthetic stellar spectra from 300 nm to 1.8 μm with solar and α-enhanced composition (2005, methodology): “Lejeune et al. (1997, Send offprint requests to: P. Coelho 1998) and Westera et al. (2002) extended this library to include spectra of M stars computed from model atmospheres from Fluks et al. (1994), Bessell et al. (1989), Bessell (1991) and Allard & Hauschildt (1995).”
Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies (2013, background): “By far the widest range in parameter space is covered by the BaSeL atlas (Lejeune, Cuisinier & Buser 1997, 1998; Westera et al. 2002).”
Accurate fundamental parameters for lower main‐sequence stars (2006, methodology): “The colour calibration has recently been extended to non-solar metallicities by Westera et al. (2002).”
Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003 (2003, methodology): “Finally, Westera (2001) and Westera et al. (2002) recently produced a new version of the library, in which they derived semi-empirical corrections for model atmospheres at nonsolar metallicities using metallicity-dependent UBVRIJHKL colour calibrations.”
THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES BETWEEN REDSHIFT 4 AND 6: OBSERVING SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS OF MASSIVE GALAXIES IN FORMATION (2009, methodology): “These models include an improved treatment of the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phase of stellar evolution, utilizing the Marigo & Girardi (2007) evolutionary tracks and the Westera et al. (2002) stellar library.”
The First Release COSMOS Optical and Near-IR Data and Catalog (2007, methodology): “Figure 11 shows four different color-color plots for stars along with colors for the Pickles (1998) library and a combination of the BaSel 3.1 (Westera et al. 2002) and NextGen theoretical libraries (Hauschildt & Baron 2005; Brott & Hauschildt 2005; Hauschildt et al. 2002) at [Fe/H]=-0.4.”
How sensitive are predicted galaxy luminosities to the choice of stellar population synthesis model (2013, methodology): “The other models make use of BaSeL, a semi-empirical library of stellar spectra (Lejeune et al. 1997, 1998; Westera et al. 2002), with extensions and modiﬁcations as indicated in Table 2.”
Virgo Cluster Early-Type Dwarf Galaxies with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Early-Type Dwarfs with Central Star Formation (2006, methodology): “…and Charlot 2000 Galaxy Isochrone Spectral Synthesis Evolution Library (GISSEL) code (Charlot & Bruzual 1991; Bruzual & Charlot 1993, 2000), implementing the Padova 2000 isochrones (Girardi et al. 2000) combined with the BaSeL 3.1 “Padova 2000” stellar library (Westera et al. 2002; Westera 2001).”
PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1 (2013, methodology): “Integrated spectra are generated using the low-resolution, semi-empirical BaSeL 3.1 library (Lejeune et al. 1997, 1998; Westera et al. 2002), which extends from the UV to the rest-frame near-infrared, except for the TP-AGB stars, for which the empirical spectra of Lançon & Mouhcine (2002) are used…”
Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, background): “As with the evolutionary tracks, stellar libraries have improved significantly in recent years, with both fully theoretical (e.g. Kurucz 1992; Westera et al. 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Coelho et al. 2005; Martins et al. 2005; Lançon et al. 2007) and empirical, e.g. STELIB (Le Borgne et al. 2003),…”
STELIB: A library of stellar spectra at R 2000 ?;?? (2003, background): “…to achieve photometric compatibility between models and data have been developed (Lejeune et al. 1997), and extended and homogeneous libraries of theoretical spectra covering the bulk of the HR-diagram and a wide range of metallicities are now available (Lejeune et al. 1998; Westera et al. 2002).”
A CATALOG OF BULGE, DISK, AND TOTAL STELLAR MASS ESTIMATES FOR THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (2013, background): “1 theoretical stellar library (Lejeune et al. 1997, 1998; Westera et al. 2002).”
Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Stellar Population Synthesis Models (2016, methodology): “We adopt the BaSeL 3.1 stellar library, a theoretical library of stellar spectra based on Kurucz models, re-calibrated using empirical photometric data (Westera et al. 2002).”