The Ages of 55 Globular Clusters as Determined Using an Improved delta V_TO^HB Method Along with Color-Magnitude Diagram Constraints, and Their Implications for Broader Issues

TL;DR

This study determines the ages of 55 globular clusters using an improved delta V_TO^HB method combined with color-magnitude diagram constraints, revealing insights into their formation history and correlations with metallicity, kinematics, and stellar populations.

Contribution

It introduces an enhanced method for estimating globular cluster ages and applies it to a large sample, uncovering new relationships between age, metallicity, and cluster properties.

Findings

Ages range from ~12.5 Gyr at low metallicity to ~11 Gyr at higher metallicity.

The age-metallicity relation is bifurcated, indicating different cluster populations.

Clusters with multiple stellar populations tend to be massive and located near the Galactic center.

Abstract

Ages have been derived for 55 globular clusters (GCs) from overlays of isochrones onto the turnoff photometry, assuming distances based on fits of zero-age horizontal branch (ZAHB) models to the lower bound of the observed distributions of HB stars. The error bar arising just from the "fitting" of ZAHBs and isochrones is ~ +/- 0.25 Gyr, while that associated with distance and chemical abundance uncertainties is ~ +/- 1.5-2 Gyr. Ages vary from mean values of ~12.5 Gyr at [Fe/H] < -1.7 to ~11 Gyr at [Fe/H] > -1.0. At intermediate metallicities, the age-metallicity relation (AMR) appears to be bifurcated: one branch apparently contains clusters with disk-like kinematics, whereas the other branch is populated by clusters with halo-type orbits. There is no apparent dependence of age on Galactocentric distance (R_G) nor is there a clear correlation of HB type with age. Subtle variations in the subgiant branch (SGB) slopes of [Fe/H] < -1.5 GCs are tentatively attributed to helium abundance differences. Curiously, GCs with steep "M13-like" SGBs tend to be massive systems, located at small R_G, that show the strongest evidence for multiple stellar populations. The others are typically low-mass systems that, at the present time, should not be able to retain the matter lost by mass-losing stars. The apparent separation of the two groups in terms of their present-day gas retention properties is difficult to understand if all GCs were initial ~20 times their current masses. The lowest mass systems may have never been able to retain enough gas to produce a significant population of second-generation stars; in this case, the observed light element abundance variations were presumably present in the gas out of which the observed cluster stars formed.