Evolutionary synthesis of stellar populations: a modular tool

Abstract

A new tool for the Evolutionary Synthesis of Stellar Populations (EPS) is presented, which is based on three independent matrices, giving respectively: 1) the fuel consumption during each evolutionary phase as a function of stellar mass; 2) the typical temperatures and gravities during such phases; 3) colours and bolometric corrections as functions of gravity and temperature. The modular structure of the code allows to easily assess the impact on the synthetic spectral energy distribution of the various assumptions and model ingredients, such as, for example, uncertainties in stellar evolutionary models, mixing length, the temperature distribution of horizontal branch (HB) stars, AGB mass loss, and colour-temperature transformations. The so-called ``AGB-Phase Transition'' in Magellanic Cloud clusters is used to calibrate the contribution of the Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch phase (TP-AGB) to the synthetic integrated luminosity. As an illustrative example, solar metallicity ($Y=0.27,Z=0.02$) models, with ages ranging between 30 {\rm Myr} and 15 {\rm Gyr} and various choices for the slope of the Initial Mass Function (IMF), are presented. Synthetic broad band colours and the luminosity contributions of the various evolutionary stages are compared with LMC and Galactic globular cluster data. In all these cases, a good agreement is found. Finally, we show the evolution of stellar mass-to-light ratios in the bolometric and U,B,V,R, and K passbands, in which the contribution of stellar remnants is accounted for.