The blue plume population in dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Genuine blue stragglers or young stellar population?

Abstract

Aims:Blue stragglers (BSS) in the Milky Way field and globular/open clusters are thought to be the product of either primordial or collisional binary systems. In the context of dwarf spheroidal galaxies it is hard to firmly disentangle a genuine BSS population from young main sequence (MS) stars tracing a ∼ 1-2 Gyr old star forming episode.
Methods: Assuming that their blue plume populations are made of BSS, we estimate the BSS frequency (F^BSS_HB; as normalized to the horizontal branch star counts) for 8 Local Group non star-forming dwarf galaxies, using a compilation of ground and space based photometry.
Results: (i) The BSS frequency in dwarf galaxies, at any given { M_V}, is always higher than that in globular clusters of similar luminosities; (ii) the BSS frequency for the lowest luminosity dwarf galaxies is in excellent agreement with that observed in the Milky Way halo and open clusters; and most interestingly (iii) derive a statistically significant F^BSS_HB-{ M_V} anti-correlation for dwarf galaxies, similar to that observed in globular clusters.
Conclusions: The low density, almost collision-less, environments of our dwarf galaxy sample allow us to infer (i) their very low dynamical evolution; (ii) a negligible production of collisional BSS; and consequently (iii) that their blue plumes are mainly made of primordial binaries. The dwarf galaxies F^BSS_HB-{ M_V} anti-correlation can be used as a discriminator: galaxies obeying the anti-correlation are more likely to possess genuine primordial BSS rather than young main sequence stars.

Based

on archival ESO and HST data.