Stellar Populations: High Spectral Resolution Libraries. Improved TP-AGB Treatment

TL;DR

This paper reviews high-resolution stellar spectral libraries and demonstrates how improved TP-AGB star modeling significantly affects galaxy mass and age estimates from spectro-photometric data.

Contribution

It introduces updated population synthesis models with enhanced TP-AGB treatment, leading to more accurate galaxy property estimations.

Findings

Galaxy stellar masses can be up to 50% lower with new models.

Inferred galaxy ages are significantly younger.

Spectro-photometric data benefits from improved stellar libraries.

Abstract

I present a short description of the STELIB, HNGSL, IndoUS, MILES, ELODIE, UVES-POP, and IRTF libraries of empirical stellar spectra and show some applications of their use in population synthesis models. When new calculations of the TP-AGB evolutionary phase for stars of different mass and metallicity are included in population synthesis models, the stellar mass in galaxies at z from 1 to 3 determined from spectro-photometric data can be up to 50% lower than the mass determined from the BC03 models. The ages inferred for these populations are considerably lower than the BC03 estimates.