PICS: Planetary Nebulae in Cosmological Simulations -- Revelations of the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function from Realistic Stellar Populations

TL;DR

This paper introduces PICS, a new method integrating planetary nebulae modeling into cosmological simulations, revealing that realistic stellar populations and metallicity effects are essential to reproduce the planetary nebula luminosity function across galaxy types.

Contribution

The paper presents PICS, the first cosmological simulation-based model of planetary nebulae that accounts for realistic stellar populations and metallicity effects.

Findings

Reproduces the bright end of the PNLF for all galaxy types.

Shows metallicity-dependent stellar lifetimes are crucial for bright PNe.

Matches the observed PNLF around the Sun across six orders of magnitude.

Abstract

Even after decades of usage as an extragalactic standard candle, the universal bright end of the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF) still lacks a solid theoretical explanation. Until now, models have modeled planetary nebulae (PNe) from artificial stellar populations, without an underlying cosmological star formation history. We present PICS (PNe In Cosmological Simulations), a novel method of modeling PNe in cosmological simulations, through which PN populations for the first time naturally occur within galaxies of diverse evolutionary pathways. We find that only by using realistic stellar populations and their metallicities is it possible to reproduce the bright end of the PNLF for all galaxy types. In particular, the dependence of stellar lifetimes on metallicity has to be accounted for to produce bright PNe in metal-rich populations. Finally, PICS reproduces the statistically complete part of the PNLF observed around the Sun, down to six orders of magnitude below the bright end.