A quantification of the effects using different stellar population synthesis models for epoch of reionization

TL;DR

This study evaluates how different stellar population synthesis models influence the measurement of high-redshift galaxy properties and ionizing photon budgets during reionization, highlighting significant model-dependent variations.

Contribution

It systematically compares various SPS models within a semi-analytical framework to quantify their impact on galaxy luminosity functions and ionizing photon production during reionization.

Findings

Different SPS models cause up to 0.5 dex variation in UV luminosity functions.

Binary stars increase ionizing photon output by about 40%.

The BPASS model yields roughly 100% more ionizing photons than other models.

Abstract

The luminosity and spectral energy distribution (SED) of high-$z$ galaxies are sensitive to the stellar population synthesis (SPS) models. In this paper, we study the effects of different SPS models on the measurements of high-$z$ galaxies and the budget of ionizing photons during the epoch of reionization, by employing each of them in the semi-analytical galaxy formation model {\sc L-Galaxies 2020}. We find that the different SPS models lead to $\lesssim 0.5$ dex differences on the amplitudes of UV luminosity functions, while the two modes of the same SPS model with and without the inclusion of binary stars leads to similar UV luminosity functions at $z \ge 6$. Instead, the binary stars produce $\sim 40\%$ more ionizing photons than the single stars, while such differences are smaller than those caused by different SPS models, e.g. the BPASS model produces $\sim 100\%$ more ionizing photons than other models.