The Ages of Galactic Bulge Stars with Realistic Uncertainties

Abstract

Using modern isochrones with customized physics and carefully considered statistical techniques, we recompute the age distribution for a sample of 91 microlensed dwarfs in the Galactic bulge presented by Bensby et al. and do not produce an age distribution consistent with their results. In particular, our analysis finds that only 15 of 91 stars have ages younger than 7 Gyr, compared to their finding of 42 young stars in the same sample. While we do not find a constituency of very young stars, our results do suggest the presence of an ∼8 Gyr population at the highest metallicities, thus contributing to the long-standing debate about the age–metallicity distribution of the Galactic bulge. We supplement this with attempts at independent age determinations from two sources of photometry, BDBS and Gaia, but find that the imprecision of photometric measurements prevents reliable age and age uncertainty determinations. Lastly, we present age uncertainties derived using a first-order consideration of global modeling uncertainties in addition to standard observational uncertainties. The theoretical uncertainties are based on the known variance of free parameters in the 1D stellar evolution models used to generate isochrones, and when included, result in age uncertainties of 2–5 Gyr for this spectroscopically well-constrained sample. These error bars, which are roughly twice as large as typical literature values, constitute realistic lower limits on the true age uncertainties.