Sampling effects in the emission line spectra of HII regions

Abstract

The combination of stellar population synthesis models and photoionization models allows a better understanding of the spectral features of HII regions and HII galaxies. In this work we show that sampling effects in the initial mass function (IMF) are very important in the low cluster mass case. To this aim, we compute photoionization models ionized by realistic clusters made up of various combinations of individual stars and clusters made up with a synthesis model. We discuss the differences in the position on diagnostic diagrams and their implications.

2 pages, 1 figure, going to be published in the proceedings of the IAU Symp. 241, "Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies"