Reddening, Colour and Metallicity of the M31 Globular Cluster System

TL;DR

This study analyzes the metallicity, reddening, and spatial distribution of the M31 globular cluster system using the largest available dataset, revealing bimodal metallicity distribution, gradients, and spatial trends in reddening.

Contribution

It provides the most comprehensive analysis of M31 globular clusters, including new metallicity and reddening measurements for a large sample, and explores their distribution and properties in detail.

Findings

The metallicity distribution of M31 GCs is bimodal with peaks at -1.7 and -0.7 dex.

Metal-poor GCs show a metallicity gradient with radius, while metal-rich GCs do not.

More than half of the GCs experience reddening with mean E(B-V) of 0.28 mag.

Abstract

Using metallicities from the literature, combined with the Revised Bologna Catalogue of photometric data for M31 clusters and cluster candidates (the latter of which is the most comprehensive catalogue of M31 clusters currently available, including 337 confirmed globular clusters -- GCs -- and 688 GC candidates), we determine 443 reddening values and intrinsic colours, and 209 metallicities for individual clusters without spectroscopic observations. This, the largest sample of M31 GCs presently available, is then used to analyse the metallicity distribution of M31 GCs, which is bimodal with peaks at $\rm {[Fe/H]}\approx -1.7$ and -0.7 dex. An exploration of metallicities as a function of radius from the M31 centre shows a metallicity gradient for the metal-poor GCs, but no such gradient for the metal-rich GCs. Our results show that the metal-rich clusters appear as a centrally concentrated spatial distribution; however, the metal-poor clusters tend to be less spatially concentrated. There is no correlation between luminosity and metallicity among the M31 sample clusters, which indicates that self-enrichment is indeed unimportant for cluster formation in M31. The reddening distribution shows that slightly more than half of the GCs are affected by a reddening of $E(B-V) \la 0.2$ mag; the mean reddening value is $E(B-V) = 0.28_{-0.14}^{+0.23}$ mag. The spatial distribution of the reddening values indicates that the reddening on the northwestern side of the M31 disc is more significant than that on the southeastern side, which is consistent with the conclusion that the northwestern side in nearer to us.