Extragalactic archaeology through high-resolution integrated-light spectroscopy of globular clusters

TL;DR

This paper proposes using high-resolution spectroscopy of extragalactic globular clusters to reconstruct galaxy formation histories, trace dark matter, and measure distances, significantly advancing extragalactic archaeology.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale spectroscopic approach to analyze globular clusters for detailed galaxy assembly and dark matter studies.

Findings

Enables chemical tagging of galaxy assembly history

Facilitates dark matter halo tracing

Improves extragalactic distance measurements

Abstract

We propose to radically expand the use of extragalactic globular clusters as tools for extragalactic archaeology. We propose a large-scale spectroscopic facility to obtain high spectral resolution (R $\sim$ 20,000) spectroscopy for a significant fraction of all globular clusters in the nearby Universe. This will facilitate the reconstruction of galaxy assembly histories via chemical tagging, trace dark matter haloes, and measure extragalactic distances.