New Way to Date Globular Clusters: Brown Dwarf Cooling Sequences

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new JWST-based method to determine globular cluster ages using brown dwarf cooling sequences, offering high precision and a way to test existing age estimates.

Contribution

It presents a likelihood-based, histogram-free approach to derive cluster ages from JWST photometry, addressing systematic errors and providing practical observation guidelines.

Findings

Formal age errors under 0.2 Gyr are achievable for nearby clusters.

Systematic effects like multiple populations and binary systems dominate error budgets.

A lookup table for observation planning to achieve desired age precision is provided.

Abstract

As the oldest building blocks of our Galaxy, globular clusters retain the archaeological footprint of the early stellar environments. Accurate absolute ages of globular clusters are required to interpret this ancient record. Existing dating techniques often produce precise but discordant ages, suggestive of systematic errors in excess of 1 Gyr. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unlocked a new dating method that leverages the cooling behavior of previously unobservable brown dwarf members. With a largely independent set of systematic errors, this new method provides a new consistency test for more established methodologies. I present a likelihood-based histogram-free method to derive globular cluster ages from multi-band JWST photometry of cluster members near and below the hydrogen-burning limit. By applying the method to a large set of simulated observations, I establish that formal age errors (i.e. errors based on measurement uncertainties alone) under 0.2 Gyr are attainable for nearby globular clusters. I also evaluate the significance of associated systematic effects, including the chemical heterogeneity of globular clusters (multiple populations), unresolved binary systems and uncertainties in brown dwarf cooling rates. As with other methods of age determination, systematic effects dominate the error budget (in selected cases, by over an order of magnitude), but may be reduced with more sophisticated analysis. Finally, I provide a lookup table for determining the number of observations, exposure times and temporal baselines required to estimate the age of a given cluster to a prescribed precision.