Related papers: Stochastic stellar cluster IMFs: Models and impact…
The simple stellar population models produced by stellar population and spectral synthesis (SPS) codes are used as spectral templates in a variety of astrophysical contexts. In this paper, we test the predictions of four commonly used…
Accurate specification of a likelihood function is becoming increasingly difficult in many inference problems in astronomy. As sample sizes resulting from astronomical surveys continue to grow, deficiencies in the likelihood function lead…
A wealth of observations recently challenged the notion of a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) by showing evidences in favour of a variability of this statistical indicator as a function of galaxy properties. I present…
The study of galaxy evolution hinges on our ability to interpret multi-wavelength galaxy observations in terms of their physical properties. To do this, we rely on spectral energy distribution (SED) models which allow us to infer physical…
Cosmological simulations are reaching the resolution necessary to study ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. Observations indicate that in small populations, the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is not fully populated; rather, stars are sampled…
The primary method for inferring the stellar mass ($M_*$) of a galaxy is through spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling. However, the technique rests on assumptions such as the galaxy star formation history and dust attenuation law…
The majority of clusters in the Universe have masses well below 10^5 Msun. Hence their integrated fluxes and colors can be affected by the random presence of a few bright stars introduced by stochastic sampling of the stellar mass function.…
A universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) should not be expected from theoretical models of star formation, but little conclusive observational evidence for a variable IMF has been uncovered. In this paper, a parameterization of the…
Stochasticity of bright stars introduces uncertainty and bias into derived structural parameters of star clusters. We have simulated a grid of cluster $V$-band images, observed with Subaru Suprime-Cam with age, mass, and size representing a…
We present a pilot library of synthetic NUV, U, B, V, and I photometry of star clusters with stochastically sampled IMFs and ionized gas for initial masses, $M_i=10^3$, $10^4$, and $10^5$ M$_{\odot}$; $t=1$, 3, 4, and 8 Myr; $Z=0.014$ and…
We present SLUG, a new code to "Stochastically Light Up Galaxies". SLUG populates star clusters by randomly drawing stars from an initial mass function (IMF) and then following their time evolution with stellar models and an…
Evolutionary synthesis models are the prime method to construct models of stellar populations, and to derive physical parameters from observations. One of the assumptions for such models so far has been the time-independence of the stellar…
Context. An automatic tool to derive structural parameters of semi-resolved star clusters located in crowded stellar fields in nearby galaxies is needed for homogeneous processing of archival frames. Aims. We have developed a program that…
The stochastic nature of the IMF in young stellar clusters implies that clusters of the same mass and age do not present the same unique values of their observed parameters. Instead they follow a distribution. We address the study of such…
Despite valiant efforts over nearly five decades, attempts to determine the IMF over a complete mass range for galactic field stars and in open clusters have proved difficult. Infrared imaging observations of extremely young embedded…
Open and globular star clusters have served as benchmarks for the study of stellar evolution due to their supposed nature as simple stellar populations of the same age and metallicity. After a brief review of some of the pioneering work…
We use empirical star formation histories (SFHs), measured from HST-based resolved star color-magnitude diagrams, as input into population synthesis codes to model the broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of ~50 nearby dwarf…
Conventionally, CMD analyses of nearby star clusters are based on observations in 2 passbands. They are plagued by considerable degeneracies between age, metallicity, distance (and extinction) that can largely be resolved by including…
We discuss the systematic uncertainties inherent to analyses of observed (broad-band) Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of star clusters with evolutionary synthesis models. We investigate the effects caused by restricting oneself to a…
The stellar initial mass functions (IMFs) for the Galactic bulge, the Milky Way, other galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the integrated stars in the Universe are composites from countless individual IMFs in star clusters and associations…