Deep HST WFPC2 Photometry of M31's Thick Disk(?)

Abstract

We present deep color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for a field along the outer disk of M31 based on archival Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations in the F555W (~V) and F814W (~I) filters. The CMDs, which contain a total of about 50,000 stars, feature a prominent red giant branch (RGB) along with a significant population of helium burning red clump stars. In addition, they exhibit the rarely seen asymptotic giant branch clump as well as a weak `Pop II' horizontal branch. There is also the hint of a ~2 Gyr subgiant branch at the faintest levels of the CMDs. After adopting an M31 distance of (m-M)o = 24.5 and a reddening of E(B-V) = 0.08, we draw the following conclusions. 1) The I-band absolute magnitude of the helium burning red clump stars is M(RC) = -0.29 +/- 0.05, which is in accord with the value derived from Hipparcos parallaxes of solar neighborhood clump stars by Stanek & Garnavich. 2) The metallicity distribution function constructed from bright RGB stars shows a characteristic shape; however, a pure halo population consisting of metal-poor and intermediate metallicity components (as advocated in the literature) are not sufficient to account for this shape. Instead, an additional Gaussian component with <[Fe/H]> = -0.22 +/- 0.26, comprising 70% of the total number of stars, is required. 3) A comparison of our CMD with theoretical isochrones indicates that the majority of stars in our M31 field have ages that are >~1.5 Gyr. 4) These points, along with the physical location of our field in M31, suggest that we are observing the thick disk population of this galaxy.