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Cassisi, S, Salaris, M, Pietrinferni, A and Hyder, D (2017) On the determination of the He abundance distribution in globular clusters from the width of the main sequence. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 464 (2). pp. 2341-2348. ISSN 0035-8711
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Abstract
One crucial piece of information to study the origin of multiple stellar populations in globular clusters is the range of initial helium abundances ΔY amongst the sub-populations hosted by each cluster. These estimates are commonly obtained by measuring the width in colour of the unevolved main sequence in an optical colour-magnitude diagram (CMD). The measured colour spread is then compared with predictions from theoretical stellar isochrones with varying initial He abundances to determine ΔY. The availability of UV/optical magnitudes, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic GCs project, will allow the homogeneous determination of ΔY for a large Galactic globular cluster sample. From a theoretical point of view, accurate UV CMDs can efficiently disentangle the various subpopulations, and main sequence colour differences in the ACS F606W - (F606W - F814W) diagram allow an estimate of ΔY. We demonstrate that from a theoretical perspective, the (F606W - F814W) colour is an extremely reliable He-abundance indicator. The derivative dY/d(F606W - F814W), computed at a fixed luminosity along the unevolved main sequence, is largely insensitive to the physical assumptions made in stellar model computations, being more sensitive to the choice of the bolometric correction scale, and is only slightly dependent on the adopted set of stellar models. From a theoretical point of view, the (F606W - F814W) colour width of the cluster main sequence is therefore a robust diagnostic of the ΔY range. © 2016 The Authors.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | 0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics Q Science > QD Chemistry |
| Divisions: | Astrophysics Research Institute |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Date Deposited: | 11 May 2017 09:40 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Apr 2022 09:05 |
| DOI or ID number: | 10.1093/mnras/stw2579 |
| URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/6402 |
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