Using the Tip of the Red Giant Branch as a Distance Indicator in the Near Infrared

Abstract

The tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) is a well-established standard candle used to measure distances to nearby galaxies. The TRGB luminosity is typically measured in the I-band, where the luminosity has little dependency on stellar age or stellar metallicity. As the TRGB is brighter at wavelengths redder than the I-band, observational gains can be made if the TRGB luminosity can be robustly calibrated at longer wavelengths. This is of particular interest given the infrared capabilities that will be available with the James Webb Space Telescope and an important calibration consideration for using TRGB distances as part of an independent measurement of the Hubble constant. Here, we use simulated photometry to investigate the dependency of the TRGB luminosity on stellar age and metallicity as a function of wavelength (475 nm - 4.5 micron). We find intrinsic variations in the TRGB magnitude to increase from a few hundredths of a magnitude at 800-900 nm to ~0.6 mag by 1.5 micron. We show that variations at the longer infrared wavelengths can be reduced to 0.02-0.05 mag (1-2% accuracy in distance) with careful calibrations that account for changes in age and metal content. These represent the minimum uncertainties; observational uncertainties will be higher. Such calibration efforts may also provide independent constraints of the age and metallicity of stellar halos where TRGB distances are best measured. At 3.6 and 4.5 micron, the TRGB magnitude is predicted to vary up to ~0.15 mag even after corrections for stellar age and metallicity, making these wavelengths less suitable for precision distances.

11 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (13)

• Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheid Standards Provide a 1% Foundation for the Determination of the Hubble Constant and Stronger Evidence for Physics Beyond LambdaCDM
• The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies
• Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances. I. Optimization of a Maximum Likelihood Algorithm
• VLT spectroscopy of blue supergiants in IC 1613
• The brightness of the Red Giant Branch tip: Theoretical framework, a set of reference models, and predicted observables
• The Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies. IV. Color Dependence and Zero-Point Calibration
• Old-Aged Stellar Population Distance Indicators
• Global Properties of M31's Stellar Halo from the SPLASH Survey: II. Metallicity Profile
• Sharpening the Tip of the Red Giant Branch
• The ACS LCID project. X. The Star Formation History of IC 1613: Revisiting the Over-Cooling Problem
• DUSTiNGS III: Distribution of Intermediate-Age and Old Stellar Populations in Disks and Outer Extremities of Dwarf Galaxies
• The Near-Infrared Tip of the Red Giant Branch. II. An Absolute Calibration in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Near-Infrared Tip of the Red Giant Branch. I. A Calibration in the Isolated Dwarf Galaxy IC 1613

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB)
• The CosmoVerse White Paper: Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics
• Distances to PHANGS Galaxies: New Tip of the Red Giant Branch Measurements and Adopted Distances
• Consistent Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch in the Large Magellanic Cloud on the Hubble Space Telescope Photometric System and a Re-determination of the Hubble Constant
• The Parallax of Omega Centauri Measured from Gaia EDR3 and a Direct, Geometric Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch and the Hubble Constant
• The Extragalactic Distance Database: The Color-Magnitude Diagrams and Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances Catalog
• Carbon stars as standard candles: I. The luminosity function of carbon stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Local Distance Network: a community consensus report on the measurement of the Hubble constant at 1% precision
• Cool stars in the Galactic Center as seen by APOGEE: M giants, AGB stars and supergiant stars/candidates
• MCR-TRGB: A Multiwavelength-Covariant, Robust Tip of the Red Giant Branch Measurement Method
• Confirmation and physical characterization of the new bulge globular cluster Patchick 99 from the VVV and Gaia surveys
• Quantifying Uncertainties on the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Method
• Comparative Analysis of TRGBs (CATs) from Unsupervised, Multi-Halo-Field Measurements: Contrast is Key
• Unveiling the nature of 12 new low-luminosity Galactic Globular Cluster Candidates
• On the Color-Metallicity Relation of the Red Clump and the Reddening Toward the Magellanic Clouds
• An Empirical Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance Method in the Near Infrared. I. HST WFC3/IR F110W and F160W Filters
• Carbon stars as standard candles -- III. Un-binned maximum likelihood fitting and comparison with TRGB estimations
• Relativistic corrections for measuring Hubble's constant to 1% using stellar standard candles
• Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances with JWST. II. I-band Measurements in a Sample of Hosts of 10 SN Ia Match HST Cepheids
• Mathematical Underpinnings of the Multi-Wavelength Structure of the TRGB
• Coordinated JWST Imaging of Three Distance Indicators in a SN Host Galaxy and an Estimate of the TRGB Color Dependence
• Standardized Luminosity of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch utilizing Multiple Fields in NGC 4258 and the CATs Algorithm
• Measuring distances to galaxies with globular cluster velocity dispersions
• The Chicago Carnegie Hubble Program: Improving the Calibration of SNe Ia with JWST Measurements of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch
• Spatially-resolved TRGB JWST color-magnitude as a tool to measure fossil stellar metallicity gradients in disk galaxies: NGC 628
• Galaxy Properties at the Faint End of the HI Mass Function