Population effects on the red giant clump absolute magnitude: The K-band

By Maurizio Salaris, Leo Girardi Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moore's University, U. O. A. D. Trieste, Italy.. 2002

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a detailed analysis of the behaviour of the red clump K-band absolute magnitude (MRCK) in simple and composite stellar populations, in light of its use as a standard candle for distance determinations. The advantage of using MRCK, following recent empirical calibrations of its value for the solar neighbourhood, arises from its very low sensitivity to extinction by interstellar dust. We show that, as in the case of the V- and I-band results, MRCK is a complicated function of the stellar metallicity Z and age t. In general, MRCK is more sensitive to t and Z than MRCI, for high t and low Z. Moreover, for ages above ∼1.5 Gyr, MRCK decreases with increasing Z, i.e. the opposite behaviour with respect to MRCV and MRCI. We provide data and equations that allow the determination of the K-band population correction ΔMRCK (the difference between the red clump brightness in the solar neighbourhood and in the population under scrutiny) for any generic stellar population. These data complement the results presented by Girardi & Salaris for the V- and I-band. We show how data from galactic open clusters consistently support our predicted ΔMRCV , ΔMRCI and ΔMRCK values. Multiband VIK population corrections for various galaxy systems are provided. They can be used in conjunction with the method devised by Alves et al., in order to derive simultaneously reddening and distance from the use of VIK observations of red clump stars. We have positively tested this technique on the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tuc, for which both an empirical parallax-based main-sequence-fitting distance and reddening estimates exist. We have also studied the case of using only V and I photometry, recovering consistent results for both reddening and distance. Application of this method to an OGLE-II field, and the results by Alves et al., confirm a Large Magellanic Cloud distance modulus of about 18.50, in agreement with the Hubble Space Telescope extragalactic distance scale zero-point.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aadfd7784ea126b5ffb806c2fab24e52d9d0d880

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Citations in the corpus

• REDDENING AND EXTINCTION TOWARD THE GALACTIC BULGE FROM OGLE-III: THE INNER MILKY WAY'S RV ∼ 2.5 EXTINCTION CURVE (2012, methodology): “…MI,RC from Stellar Models, a Hipparcos calibration, and the Bulge RC Spectroscopic Metallicity Distribution Function Girardi & Salaris (2001) and Salaris & Girardi (2002) constructed a grid of horizontal branch stellar models to predict the functional dependence of the properties of the RC on…”
• A Low-Mass Planet with a Possible Sub-Stellar-Mass Host in Microlensing Event MOA-2007-BLG-192 (2008, background): “From Girardi & Salaris (2001) and Salaris & Girardi (2002) we have MI = −0.25±0.05, MV = 0.79±0.08 and V −I = 1.04±0.08 for the centroid of the Galactic bulge red giant clump.”
• The Wobbly Galaxy : kinematics north and south with RAVE red-clump giants (2013, methodology): “…(2007) have shown D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /m nras/article-abstract/436/1/101/971163 by U niversity C ollege London user on 28 January 2020 that there is some dependence on metallicity and age which can be accounted for by the theoretical model of Salaris & Girardi (2002).”
• The Adequacy of Stellar Evolution Models for the Interpretation of the Color-Magnitude Diagrams of Resolved Stellar Populations (2005, background): “Other authors have explored the possibility that the K magnitude of the RC might be less sensitive to population effects and reddening uncertainties, with no clear consensus (see Alves 2000; Grocholski & Sarajedini 2002; Salaris & Girardi 2002; Pietrzynśki, Gieren & Udalski 2003).”
• AGE DETERMINATION OF SIX INTERMEDIATE-AGE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD STAR CLUSTERS WITH HST/ACS (2008, unknown): “We refer to Salaris & Girardi (2002) who study the behavior of the red clump as a function of age.”
• Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars. XI. The Tidal Tails of the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and the Discovery of Magellanic Cloud Stars in the Carina Foreground (2006, background): “Given that Carina has stellar populations as young as 0.6-1.0 Gyr (Monelli et al. 2003), it might not be too surprising to find some core He-burning stars lying above the canonical red clump from the dominant, older, more metalpoor Carina population (e.g. Salaris & Girardi 2002).”
• On the fine structure of the Cepheid metallicity gradient in the Galactic thin disk (2014, background): “…larger uncertainties, since we are dealing with stellar populations covering a broad range in ages and in metal abundances (Girardi & Salaris 2001; Salaris & Girardi 2002). ii) Gradients – Recent spectroscopic investigations indicate that the use of homogeneous and accurate iron abundances…”
• The structure of the Milky Way's bar outside the bulge (2015, background): “For reference, to have formed RCGs the stars must still be & 500Myr old but galaxies with ongoing star formation have a strong bias to younger RCGs with c© 2015 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–18 a peak of age ∼ 1Gyr (Girardi & Salaris 2001; Salaris & Girardi 2002).”
• The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “This resulted in a total nonaxisymmetric mass for the thin bar component of M tlb 6– 8 × 109 M , assuming a 10-Gyr-old, α-enhanced population, and M slb∼3 × 109 M for the superthin component, assuming a constant past SFR. Owing to its 5-kpc half-length and its total mass of ∼1010 M , the long bar ma”
• A COLD NEPTUNE-MASS PLANET OGLE-2007-BLG-368Lb: Cold neptunes are common (2009, background): “…intrinsic RCG magnitude MI,RC,0 = −0.25±0.05, MV,RC,0 = 0.79±0.08 and color (V −I)RC,0 = 1.04±0.08 from Bennett et al. (2008) which is based on Girardi & Salaris (2001) and Salaris & Girardi (2002), where the error is assigned based on the size of the theoretical corrections to the RCG magnitudes.”
• Made-to-measure models of the Galactic box/peanut bulge: stellar and total mass in the bulge region (2015, result): “This assumption is supported by the theoretical work of Salaris & Girardi (2002) where they showed that for an old star population of about 10Gyr one would expect the number of RCGs to vary by less that 10% for metallicity in the range −1.5 6 [M/H] 6 0.2.”
• LIFTING THE DUSTY VEIL WITH NEAR- AND MID-INFRARED PHOTOMETRY. I. DESCRIPTION AND APPLICATIONS OF THE RAYLEIGH–JEANS COLOR EXCESS METHOD (2011, background): “For example, the red clump is centered at a color of (J −Ks)0 ∼ 0.7 mag, appropriate to disk metallicity RC stars (e.g., Salaris & Girardi 2002).”
• Insights on the Milky Way bulge formation from the correlations between kinematics and metallicity (2010, background): “Concerning the age of the two populations, we expect the spheroid component to be old, while the pseudo-bulge component may contain both the old stars of the inner disc redistributed by the bar and younger stars whose formation has been triggered by the bar gas flow. van Loon et al. (2003) found tha”
• Dynamical modelling of the galactic bulge and bar: the Milky Way's pattern speed, stellar and dark matter mass distribution (2016, methodology): “Theoretical models by Salaris & Girardi (2002) show that for a 10Gyr old stellar population, RCGs trace the stellar mass within 10% for metallicities in the range −1.5 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ 0.2.”
• THE SPLIT RED CLUMP OF THE GALACTIC BULGE FROM OGLE-III (2010, background): “Salaris & Girardi (2002), analyzing the results of their simulations in K-band, found that the brightness of the clump increases with increasing metallicity, whereas V and I-band brightness decrease with increasing metallicity.”
• THE DISTANCE, MASS, AND RADIUS OF THE NEUTRON STAR IN 4U 1608−52 (2008, background): “The absolute magnitude (MK) and intrinsic color, (J − Ks)0, of the red clump giants are well established (Alves 2000; Grocholski & Sarajedini 2002; Salaris & Girardi 2002; Pietrzyński et al. 2003).”
• Evolution of Stars and Stellar Populations (2005, background): “The effect of the SFH on the HB brightness is expected to be generally smaller if one employs the I , and especially the K (when metallicities are around solar) filters, but some knowledge of the SFH is absolutely necessary for a meaningful distance determination using HB stars ([83], [179]).”
• Reddening and metallicity maps of the Milky Way bulge from VVV and 2MASS II. The complete high resolution extinction map and implications for Galactic bulge studies (2012, unknown): “The influence of population effects on the RC magnitudes and color has been investigated both theoretically (Girardi & Salaris 2001; Salaris & Girardi 2002) and observationally (Alves 2000; Grocholski & Sarajedini 2002; Pietrzyński et al. 2003; Laney et al. 2012).”
• Interstellar Extinction Law in the J, H, and Ks Bands toward the Galactic Center (2006, unknown): “0.05 mag / [M/H]; Salaris & Girardi 2002).”