Formation of Globular Cluster Systems II: Impact of the Cutoff of the Cluster Initial Mass Function

Abstract

Observations of young star clusters reveal that the high-mass end of the cluster initial mass function (CIMF) deviates from a pure power-law and instead truncates exponentially. We investigate the effects of this truncation on the formation of globular cluster (GC) systems by updating our analytic model for cluster formation and evolution, which is based on dark matter halo merger trees coupled to empirical galactic scaling relations, and has been shown in previous work to match a wide array of observational data. The cutoff masses of $M_c=10^{6.5} M_{\odot}$ or $10^{7}M_{\odot}$ match many scaling relations: between the GC system mass and host halo mass, between the average metallicity of the GC system and host halo mass, and the distribution of cluster masses. This range of $M_c$ agrees with indirect measurements from extragalactic GC systems. Models with $M_c<10^{6.5}M_{\odot}$ cannot reproduce the observed GC metallicity and mass distributions in massive galaxies. The slope of the mass-metallicity relation for metal-poor clusters (blue tilt) for all $M_c$ models is consistent with observations within their errors, when measured using the same method. We introduce an alternative, more robust fitting method, which reveals a trend of increasing tilt slope for lower $M_c$. In our model the blue tilt arises because the metal-poor clusters form in relatively low-mass galaxies which lack sufficient cold gas to sample the CIMF at highest masses. Massive blue clusters form in progressively more massive galaxies and inherit their higher metallicity. The metal-rich clusters do not exhibit such a tilt because they form in significantly more massive galaxies, which have enough cold gas to fully sample the CIMF.