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R.P. Schiavon, S. Faber (UCO/Lick Observatory)
As part of the DEEP project, we intend to estimate luminosity-weighted ages and metal-abundances of galaxies at z ~ 1. As a first step towards this goal, we developed a new set of evolutionary population synthesis models which are presented here. These models are based on state-of-the-art theoretical isochrones and a comprehensive high-resolution empirical stellar spectral library. The basic outputs of the models are integrated colors and spectra of single stellar populations, for a range of ages (1--18Gyrs), metallicities ([Fe/H]=--0.7 through +0.2) and IMFs. The integrated spectra have a resolution of 1.8{\rmÅ} (FWHM) in the range \lambda\lambda 3820--5460{\rmÅ}. In this poster-paper, we provide a first test of the new models, by comparing them with colors and spectrophotometric observations of Galactic globular clusters. We draw special attention to the predictions of spectral indices bluer than \lambda~ 4500{\rmÅ}, which is the optimal spectral region for stellar population studies on DEEP spectra. Among the most important blue spectral indices for the purposes of our project are the Hydrogen lines, from H\gamma through H\epsilon, for those will be our main age indicators for high-z galaxies.
RPS is a Gemini Fellow, supported by the National Science Foundation through grant GF-1002-99 and from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NSF cooperative agreement AST 96-13615.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: ripisc@ucolick.org