Research Symposium

BIO

I am a Physics and Astrophysics Major at FSU from Orlando, Florida. Since I was young, I have always had a passion for the cosmos, and now at FSU, I can finally delve into my study of space. In the future, I would like to do more research at the intersection between Astrophysics and Programming.

Uncertainty Quantification of Stellar Cluster Parameters Using the Method of Stellar Isochrones

Abstract

A stellar cluster is a collection of stars created nearly simultaneously from material of similar properties in a single, star-forming region. Understanding the properties of such stellar populations allows researchers to gain insight into the problems of star formation.
In this work, we implement a method that enables the estimation of average properties of stellar populations, such as age, metallicity, and rotation rate. In the adopted solution method, known as the stellar isochrone fitting method, one identifies a region of the so-called Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD) occupied by the stellar members of the cluster, had they been formed with the three corresponding parameters. This allows one to construct a set of stellar evolution models for different masses and identify a set of synthetic observable parameters that best fit the observed properties of the target stellar population.
To estimate the average properties of the stellar cluster, one needs to construct a theoretical isochrone and match it to the observed stellar cluster’s HRD by adjusting the above-mentioned three parameters of the problem. To construct theoretical isochrones, a database of stellar evolutionary models for different stellar masses, metallicities, and rotation rates was produced using the MESA stellar evolution code. The isochrone method, a nonlinear optimization method that fits a series of trial theoretical isochrones, was constructed using a multidimensional interpolation of the stellar model database. This demonstrates how the implemented isochrone method can be used to verify its proper performance applied to synthetic stellar clusters given perturbation to initial parameters.

Keywords: Physics, Astrophysics, Stellar Cluster, Isochrone,