From young to old: spectral models for star cluster systems

Abstract

Evolutionary synthesis models for star clusters of various metallicities including gaseous emission during the lifetime of the ionising stars are used to model star cluster systems comprising two populations: an old metal-poor globular clusters (GC) population similar to that of the Milky Way halo and a second GC population of arbitrary metallicity. We investigate the time evolution of color distributions and luminosity functions for the two GC populations in comparison with observations on E/S0 galaxies. We show that multi-passband data for GC populations give clues to the relative ages and metallicities of blue and red subpopulations and help constrain formation scenarios for their parent galaxies.