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R. Ciardullo (Penn State), R.E. Kuzio (U Maryland), A. Simone (Penn State)
We describe a population synthesis program designed to probe the chemical and star formation history of a galaxy via its planetary nebulae. The program models galactic evolution via a series of starbursts with varying stellar metallicity, and, with the aid of an initial mass-final mass relation, predicts the distribution of central star masses for present day objects. The program then uses this information, along with post-asymptotic giant branch stellar evolutionary tracks, a generalized description of the stars' expanding nebulae and circumstellar dust, and the CLOUDY photo-ionization code, to generate the emission-line strengths for an ensemble of model PNe. These data can then be compared to the observed emission lines of a population's planetary nebulae.
We present the first results from this program. We show that helium-burning central stars are more important to the bright-end of the [O~III] \lambda 5007 planetary nebula luminosity function than hydrogen-burning stars, and demonstrate that this luminosity function is not monotonic for all stellar populations.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rbc@astro.psu.edu