Stellar Population Synthesis Modeling: A Critical Evaluation

恒星族综合模型：批判性评估

• 批准号: 0908368
• 负责人: James Gunn
• 金额: $ 35.22万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0908368&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Stellar; Population; Synthesis; Modeling; Critical

Dr. James Gunn (Princeton University) will undertake a detailed examination of the ingredients and methodology of stellar population synthesis (SPS) models. This type of modeling provides the bridge between the physical properties of galaxies (such as chemical composition, stellar mass, and star formation history) and the observed spectral energy distributions. It also represents the fundamental link between extragalactic observations and models of galaxy assembly. Despite its importance in many areas of extragalactic astronomy, the uncertainties associated with SPS modeling have received relatively little attention. This situation is especially troubling in light of known and important deficiencies in current implementations of SPS.In this project, Dr. Gunn will develop a flexible SPS code that is capable of incorporating uncertainties in stellar evolution, including the evolution and properties of evolved stars of all types. He will also explore uncertainties in stellar spectral libraries, models of dust in galaxies, the distribution of stellar abundances and the history of chemical enrichment, and the relative numbers of stars of different mass. The goals of the study are to provide robust constraints on the physical properties of large samples of galaxies, to investigate the extent to which uncertainties in SPS make it difficult to compare galaxy formation models to observations, and to highlight which uncertainties in SPS are the most important to address with future observations.The new, versatile SPS code developed under this proposal will be publicly released so that it may be maximally useful to the community. In addition, the code will be open source, which is unique for SPS codes. The project will also create comprehensive catalogs of a variety of physical properties of galaxies from existing and future surveys of galaxy properties. These catalogs will be fully released to the public on a short time-scale.

James古恩博士（普林斯顿大学）将详细研究恒星星族合成模型的成分和方法。 这种类型的建模提供了星系的物理性质（如化学成分，恒星质量和星星形成历史）和观测到的光谱能量分布之间的桥梁。它也代表了河外观测和星系集合模型之间的基本联系。尽管它在河外天文学的许多领域的重要性，与SPS建模的不确定性得到了相对较少的关注。这种情况是特别令人不安的，鉴于已知的和重要的缺陷，目前的实施SPS.在这个项目中，古恩博士将开发一个灵活的SPS代码，能够纳入恒星演化的不确定性，包括演化和所有类型的演化恒星的属性。 他还将探索恒星光谱库的不确定性，星系中尘埃的模型，恒星丰度的分布和化学富集的历史，以及不同质量恒星的相对数量。该研究的目标是为大样本星系的物理性质提供强大的约束，调查SPS中的不确定性在多大程度上难以将星系形成模型与观测进行比较，并强调SPS中的哪些不确定性是未来观测中最重要的。根据这一建议开发的多功能SPS代码将公开发布，以便最大限度地为社区提供帮助。 此外，该代码将是开源的，这是SPS代码所独有的。该项目还将从现有和未来的星系特性调查中创建星系各种物理特性的综合目录。这些目录将在短时间内完全向公众发布。