Chemical abundance ratios of galactic globular clusters from modelling integrated light spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study uses advanced stellar population models to analyze integrated light spectra of galactic globular clusters, deriving ages, metallicities, and element ratios, revealing chemical enrichment patterns and their implications for galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a new flux-calibrated model for absorption-line indices to derive detailed chemical abundances from integrated light spectra of globular clusters, including element-specific ratios.

Findings

Ages are consistent with literature and the universe's age.

Alpha elements show enhancement, with heavier ones like Ca and Ti less so.

First derivation of N/Fe and C/Fe ratios from integrated light spectra.

Abstract

We use our new, flux-calibrated stellar population model of absorption-line indices to derive ages, metallicities, and various element abundance ratios from integrated light spectroscopy of galactic globular clusters. The ages agree well with the literature and are all consistent with the age of the universe. There is a considerable scatter, though, and we obtain systematically larger ages than CMD determinations mostly for metal-rich globular clusters. The metallicities agree well with literature values on the Zinn & West scale, if we adopt iron abundance [Fe/H] for those clusters whose ages agree with the CMD ages. It turns out that the derivation of individual element abundance ratios is not reliable at [Fe/H]<-1 dex, while the [alpha/Fe] ratio is robust at all metallicities. We find general enhancement of light and alpha elements, as expected, with significant variations for some elements. The elements O and Mg follow the same general enhancement with almost identical distributions of [O/Fe] and [Mg/Fe]. We obtain slightly lower [C/Fe] and very high [N/Fe] ratios, instead. This chemical anomaly, commonly attributed to self-enrichment, is well known in globular clusters from individual stellar spectroscopy. It is the first time that this pattern is obtained also from the integrated light. The alpha elements follow a pattern such that the heavier elements Ca and Ti are less enhanced. More specifically, the [Ca/Fe] and [Ti/Fe] ratios are lower than [O/Fe] and [Mg/Fe] by about 0.2 dex. This trend is also seen in recent determinations of element abundances in globular cluster and field stars of the Milky Way. This suggests that Type Ia supernovae contribute significantly to the enrichment of the heavier alpha elements as predicted by nucleosynthesis calculations and galactic chemical evolution models.