Accurate, Precise, and Physically Self-consistent Ages and Metallicities for 400,000 Solar Neighborhood Subgiant Branch Stars

TL;DR

This study develops a method to accurately determine ages and metallicities for a large sample of solar neighborhood subgiant stars using Gaia data, improving precision and self-consistency over previous approaches.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new approach combining Gaia data, photometry, and extinction maps to derive precise, physically self-consistent ages and metallicities for over 400,000 subgiant stars, including metal-poor ones.

Findings

Achieved median age precision of 8-9% and metallicity precision of 0.06-0.12 dex.

Validated metallicity estimates against spectroscopic surveys.

Revealed a complex star formation history with multiple components in the solar neighborhood.

Abstract

Age is the most difficult fundamental stellar parameter to infer for isolated stars. While isochrone-based ages are in general imprecise for both main sequence dwarfs and red giants, precise isochrone-based ages can be obtained for stars on the subgiant branch transitioning from core to shell hydrogen burning. We synthesize Gaia DR3-based distance inferences, multiwavelength photometry from the ultraviolet to the mid infrared, and three-dimensional extinction maps to construct a sample of 289,759 solar-metallicity stars amenable to accurate, precise, and physically self-consistent age inferences. Using subgiants in the solar-metallicity open clusters NGC 2682 (i.e., M 67) and NGC 188, we show that our approach yields accurate and physically self-consistent ages and metallicities with median statistical precisions of 8\% and 0.06 dex. The inclusion of systematic uncertainties resulting from non-single or variable stars results in age and metallicity precisions of 9\% and 0.12 dex. We supplement this solar-metallicity sample with an additional 112,062 metal-poor subgiants, including over 3,000 stars with $[\text{Fe/H}]\lesssim-1.50$, 7\% age precisions, and apparent Gaia $G$-band magnitudes $G<14$. We further demonstrate that our inferred metallicities agree with those produced by multiplexed spectroscopic surveys. As an example of the scientific potential of this catalog, we show that the solar neighborhood star-formation history has three components at $([\text{Fe/H}],\tau/\text{Gyr}) \approx (+0.0,4)$, $(+0.2,7)$, and a roughly linear sequence in age--metallicity space beginning at $([\text{Fe/H}],\tau/\text{Gyr})\approx(+0.2,7)$ and extending to $(-0.5,13)$. Our analyses indicate that the solar neighborhood includes stars on disk-like orbits even at the oldest ages and lowest metallicities accessible by our samples.