Spectral population synthesis including massive binaries

By J. Eldridge, E. Stanway. 2009

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have constructed a new code to produce synthetic spectra of stellar populations that includes massive binaries. We have tested this code against the broad-band colours of unresolved young massive stellar clusters in nearby galaxies, the equivalent widths of the Red and Blue Wolf–Rayet bumps in star-forming Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies and the ultraviolet and optical spectra of the star-forming regions Tol-A and B in NGC 5398. In each case, we find a good agreement between our models and observations. We find that in general binary populations are bluer and have fewer red supergiants, and thus significantly less flux in the I band and at longer wavelengths, than single star populations. Also we find that Wolf–Rayet stars occur over a wider range of ages up to 107 yr in a stellar population including binaries, increasing the ultraviolet flux and Wolf–Rayet spectral features at later times. In addition, we find that nebula emission contributes significantly to these observed properties and must be considered when comparing stellar models with observations of unresolved stellar populations. We conclude that incorporation of massive stellar binaries can improve the agreement between observations and synthetic spectral synthesis codes, particularly for systems with young stellar populations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/826efc776f09eb8f68649b20676088ed6f7f7732

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Stellar population effects on the inferred photon density at reionization (2015, methodology): “…et al. (2008, 2016 in prep), are combined with the latest stellar atmosphere models and a synthetic stellar population generated according to both an initial mass function and a distribution of binary separation distances, to produce a stellar population (see Eldridge & Stanway 2009, 2012).”
Bolometric light curves and explosion parameters of 38 stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (2014, methodology): “10, the observed distribution is compared to the stellar evolution models used in the binary population and spectral synthesis (BPASS) code (Eldridge et al. 2008; Eldridge & Stanway 2009).11 The single star models in this set give no Mej values lower than 5 M .”
Conditions for Reionizing the Universe with a Low Galaxy Ionizing Photon Escape Fraction (2019, background): “Stellar population synthesis models that include binary stars (Eldridge & Stanway 2009) show that the ionizing flux is boosted by ∼60% (at low metallicities of Z<0.3 Ze) compared to models with isolated stars only (Stanway et al. 2016) due to both a harder ionizing spectrum from the primary star…”
The death of massive stars – I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of Type II-P supernovae (2008, methodology): “For full details of the construction of the stellar evolution models, we refer the reader to Eldridge et al. (2008) and for the matching of models to stellar atmospheres to Eldridge & Stanway (2009).”
BPASS predictions for binary black hole mergers (2016, methodology): “…have been tested by the authors and others against resolved and unresolved massive stellar populations in our Galaxy, nearby galaxies and those at high redshift (e.g. Eldridge, Izzard & Tout 2008; Eldridge & Stanway 2009; Eldridge, Langer & Tout 2011; Eldridge & Stanway 2012; Stanway et al. 2014).”
A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Candidate z ∼ 12 Galaxy in Early JWST CEERS Imaging (2022, methodology): “The new templates were created using stellar population models created with BPASS (Eldridge & Stanway 2009).”
PTF12os and iPTF13bvn. Two stripped-envelope supernovae from low-mass progenitors in NGC 5806 (2016, methodology): “Using the STARS models, this corresponds to a ZAMS mass of &25 M (Eldridge & Stanway 2009), since single stars less massive than this should not yet have exploded.”
ALMA SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY IN THE HUBBLE ULTRA DEEP FIELD: THE INFRARED EXCESS OF UV-SELECTED z = 2–10 GALAXIES AS A FUNCTION OF UV-CONTINUUM SLOPE AND STELLAR MASS (2016, background): “…them to output large amounts of ionizing radiation tens of million of years after an initial burst of star formation (e.g., Yoon et al. 2006; Eldridge & Stanway 2009, 2012; Levesque et al. 2012; de Mink et al. 2013; Kewley et al. 2013; Leitherer et al. 2014; Szécsi et al. 2015; Gräfener…”
CEERS Key Paper. I. An Early Look into the First 500 Myr of Galaxy Formation with JWST (2022, methodology): “They developed six additional templates spanning bluer colors by combining stellar population spectra from BPASS (Eldridge & Stanway 2009) with (optional) nebular emission derived with CLOUDY (Ferland et al. 2017).”
Delay-time distribution of core-collapse supernovae with late events resulting from binary interaction (2017, methodology): “Xiao & Eldridge (2015) discuss predictions for the ccSNe rate using the Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) code by Eldridge & Stanway (2009).”
Re-evaluating old stellar populations (2018, background): “Amongst these are our Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS, Eldridge & Stanway 2009, 2012; Eldridge et al. 2017) models, which have proven remarkably successful at matching the properties of young stellar populations (<100 Myr) across a broad range of environments and redshifts (e.g.…”
STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, methodology): “Stellar models capable of producing the inferred harder radiation field have been proposed– particularly those including binaries and/or rotation (e.g., Eldridge & Stanway 2009; Brott et al. 2011; Levesque et al. 2012; see also Figure 7).”
The big problems in star formation: The star formation rate, stellar clustering, and the initial mass function (2014, unknown): “…was ignored in earlier generations of SPS models, but detailed comparisons between the observations and newer SPS codes that include stochasticity (Eldridge & Stanway 2009; da Silva et al. 2012) show that stochastic star formation plus a normal IMF is fully consistent with the data, and in fact…”
THE MOSDEF SURVEY: EXCITATION PROPERTIES OF z ∼ 2.3 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “Steidel et al. (2014) on the other hand appeal to stellar population models including binaries and rotation in massive stars (e.g., Eldridge & Stanway 2009).”
The First Billion Years project: the escape fraction of ionizing photons in the epoch of reionization (2015, methodology): “For example, the BPASS (Eldridge & Stanway 2009) models include a more detailed treatment of massive stellar binaries which leads to a factor ∼ 1.5 higher ratio of ionising to non-ionising UV flux compared to the GALAXYEV (Bruzual & Charlot 2003) models (Mostardi et al. 2013).”
LOW-RESOLUTION SPECTRAL TEMPLATES FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI AND GALAXIES FROM 0.03 TO 30 μm (2010, background): “…of stars and stellar populations, such as the presence of thermally pulsating AGB stars (e.g., Conroy et al. 2009) and the effects of binaries (Eldridge & Stanway 2009), as well as non-stellar sources of emission, such as dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) or active nuclei, and absorption,…”
THE ROTATION RATES OF MASSIVE STARS: THE ROLE OF BINARY INTERACTION THROUGH TIDES, MASS TRANSFER, AND MERGERS (2012, background): “…of rotation rates is a high priority given its importance as a constraint for star formation theories (e.g., Rosen et al. 2012) and as input condition for modeling populations of massive stars both nearby and at high redshift (Brott et al. 2011b; Levesque et al. 2012; Eldridge & Stanway 2009).”