The SLUGGS survey: inferring the formation epochs of metal-poor and metal-rich globular clusters

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to estimate the formation epochs of metal-poor and metal-rich globular clusters using galaxy mass-metallicity relations and spectroscopic measurements, providing insights into their formation history.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel metallicity matching approach to infer globular cluster formation epochs from observational data, linking them to galaxy evolution over cosmic time.

Findings

Metal-rich GCs formed around 11.5 Gyr ago (z=2.9).

Metal-poor GCs formed between 12.2 and 12.8 Gyr ago (z=4.8-5.9).

Reionisation predates most globular cluster formation.

Abstract

We present a novel, observationally-based framework for the formation epochs and sites of globular clusters (GCs) in a cosmological context. Measuring directly the mean ages of the metal-poor and metal-rich GC subpopulations in our own Galaxy, and in other galaxies, is observationally challenging. Here we apply an alternative approach utilising the property that the galaxy mass-metallicity relation is a strong function of redshift (or look-back age) but is relatively insensitive to galaxy mass for massive galaxies. Assuming that GCs follow galaxy mass-metallicity relations that evolve with redshift, one can estimate the mean formation epochs of the two GC subpopulations by knowing their mean metallicities and the growth in host galaxy mass with redshift. Recently, the SLUGGS survey has measured the spectroscopic metallicities for over 1000 GCs in a dozen massive early-type galaxies. Here we use these measurements, and our new metallicity matching method, to infer a mean age for metal-rich GCs of 11.5 Gyr (z = 2.9) and a range of 12.2 to 12.8 Gyr (4.8 < z < 5.9) for the metal- poor GCs, depending on whether they mostly formed in accreted satellites or in-situ within the main host galaxy. We compare our values to direct age measurements for Milky Way GCs and predictions from cosmological models. Our findings suggest that reionisation preceded most GC formation, and that it is unlikely to be the cause of GC bimodal metallicity distributions.