Confidence Limits of Evolutionary Synthesis Models

Abstract

The probabilistic nature of the IMF in stellar systems implies that clusters of the same mass and age do not present the same unique values of their observed parameters. Instead they follow a distribution. We address the study of such distributions in terms of their confidence limits that can be obtained by evolutionary synthesis models. These confidence limits can be understood as the inherent uncertainties of synthesis models. We will compare such confidence limits arising from the discreteness of the number of stars obtained with Monte Carlo simulations with the dispersion resulting from an analytical formalism. We give some examples of the effects on the kinetic energy, V--K, EW(H$β$) and multiwavelength continuum.

4 pages, 4 figures, To appear in "The evolution of Galaxies II: Basic Building Blocks". The model output can be found in http://www.laeff.esa.es/users/mcs/SED