oMEGACat III. Multi-band photometry and metallicities reveal spatially well-mixed populations within $\omega$ Centauri's half-light radius

Abstract

$\omega$ Centauri, the most massive globular cluster in the Milky Way, has long been suspected to be the stripped nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that fell into the Galaxy a long time ago. There is considerable evidence for this scenario including a large spread in metallicity and an unusually large number of distinct sub-populations seen in photometric studies. In this work, we use new MUSE spectroscopic and HST photometric catalogs to investigate the underlying metallicity distributions as well as the spatial variations of the populations within the cluster up to its half-light radius. Based on 11,050 member stars, the [M/H] distribution has a median of $(-1.614\pm 0.003)$ dex and a large spread of $\sim$ 1.37 dex reaching from $-0.67$ dex to $-2.04$ dex for 99.7 % of the stars. In addition, we show the chromosome map of the cluster, which separates the red giant branch stars into different sub-populations, and analyze the sub-populations of the metal-poorest component. Finally, we do not find any metallicity gradient within the half-light radius, and the different sub-populations are well mixed.

arXiv comment22 pages, 18 figures, and 3 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (4)

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