THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALACTIC GLOBULAR CLUSTERS.: II. HELIUM ABUNDANCES AND AGES

  • Lee, See-Woo (Department of Astronomy, Seoul National University)
  • Published : 1985.12.31

Abstract

For the well observed 16 globular clusters with known metal abundance (Z), the helium abundances (Y) and ages are determined by various methods, and the relations between Y, Z and age are examined. The luminosity $L_{RR}$ of RR Lyrae stars is known to be dependent of evolutionary models and pulsation theory in the sense that the pulsation theory and horizontal branch (HB) models yield the anticorrelation between $L_{RR}$ and Z whereas main sequence (MS) and red giant branch (RGB) models yield the direct correlation between them. Similarly the anticorrelation between Y and Z is obtained from the HB models and pulsation theory whereas the direct correlation between them is obtained when the RGB model is applied. The current evolutionary models yield the anticorrelation between Z and age of clusters whenever the direct correlation between Y and Z holds. However when the anticorrelation between Y and Z is applied for age determination, the similar age of clusters is obtained as shown by Sandage (1982b). The ages, which are determined by the fitting of C-M diagrams to isochrones in the ($M_v$, B-V)-plane, suggest the two different chemical enrichment processes, which could be accounted for by the disk-halo model for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy (Lee and Ann 1981). Also it is known that the R-method is very useful for Y-determination and the derived Y's show the increasing rate of $\frac{{\Delta}Y}{{\Delta}Z}{\simeq}0.5$ which is comparable to the observed value of $\frac{{\Delta}Y}{{\Delta}Z}{\simeq}0.3$ from HII regions and planetary nebulae by Peimbert and Torres-Peimbert (1976). In this case, the age-metallicity relation of globular clusters could be explained by the disk-halo model.

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