Representative galaxy age-metallicity relationships

Abstract

The ongoing surveys of galaxies and those for the next generation of telescopes will demand the execution of high-CPU consuming machine codes for recovering detailed star formation histories (SFHs) and hence age metallicity relationships (AMRs). We present here an expeditive method which provides quick-look AMRs on the basis of representative ages and metallicities obtained from colour magnitude diagram (CMD) analyses. We have tested its performance by generating synthetic CMDs for a wide variety of galaxy SFHs. The representative AMRs turn out to be reliable down to a magnitude limit with a photometric completeness factor higher than ∼85 per cent, and trace the chemical evolution history for any stellar population (represented by a mean age and an intrinsic age spread) with a total mass within ∼40 per cent of the more massive stellar population in the galaxy.