Ecology of galaxy stellar populations from optical spectroscopic surveys

TL;DR

This paper reviews how optical spectroscopic surveys and advanced population synthesis models reveal the ages, metallicities, and element abundance ratios of stars in galaxies, shedding light on their formation and evolution processes.

Contribution

It introduces recent analysis methods for disentangling the effects of environment and stellar mass on galaxy stellar populations and discusses new models for accurate element abundance ratio estimates.

Findings

Distribution of ages and metallicities varies with galaxy mass

Environmental effects influence stellar population properties

New models enable precise element abundance ratio measurements

Abstract

The age and chemical composition of the stars in present-day galaxies carry important clues about their star formation processes. The latest generation of population synthesis models have allowed to derive age and stellar metallicity estimates for large samples of low-redshift galaxies. After reviewing the main results about the distribution in ages and metallicities as a function of galaxy mass, I will concentrate on recent analysis that aims at disentangling the dependences of stellar populations properties on environment and on galaxy stellar mass. Finally, new models that predict the response of the full spectrum to variations in [alpha/Fe] will allow us to derive accurate estimates of element abundance ratios and gain deeper insight into the timescales of star formation cessation.