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# Design formulas for short-wavelength FELs

## 1 Introduction

Successful operation of the VUV (vacuum ultraviolet) FEL (free electron laser) at the TESLA Test Facility at DESY , based on SASE (self-amplified spontaneous emission) principle , has stimulated a rapidly growing interest in the development of VUV and X-ray FELs. A number of projects (see, for instance, ) are now at different stages of design and construction.

At the first stage of a SASE FEL design one looks for the dependence of the FEL saturation length on the wavelength, electron beam parameters, undulator parameters, and beta-function. Usually the parameters are optimized for the shortest design wavelength since the saturation length is the largest in this case. The saturation length is proportional to the gain length (e-folding length) of the fundamental transverse mode (see  for more details). The gain length can be found by the solution of the FEL eigenvalue equation.

The eigenvalue equation for a high-gain FEL, including diffraction of radiation, emittance, and energy spread, was derived in . There exist approximate solutions  of this equation. The exact solution was presented in  as well as an approximate solution (with a limited validity range). The latter solution was fitted  using 3 dimensionless groups of parameters, and 19 fitting coefficients. An approximate solution, that fits the exact solution in the entire parameter space with high accuracy (better that 1 %), was presented in . A numerical algorithm for finding this approximate solution is very fast and robust. It was used to obtain the main results of this paper.

In this paper we present the explicit, simple and rather accurate dependencies of the FEL gain length on the beam and undulator parameters. Our formulas are not universal, but they provide a good accuracy (better than 5 % for the gain length) in a typical parameter range of VUV and X-ray FELs. We present the formulas without derivation since they were not derived analytically. In some sense the parametric dependencies were guessed, and then the fitting coefficients were found from the solution of the eigenvalue equation. For instance, we used only 2 fitting coefficients for the gain length with the optimized beta-function. Our formulas allow one to quickly estimate FEL saturation length, including the principal effect of energy diffusion in the undulator due to quantum fluctuations of the undulator radiation. In addition, we present two practical examples of using our design formulas: optimization of SASE FEL with negligible energy spread, and the limitation on SASE FEL wavelength taking into account quantum diffusion. In particular, we suggest for the first time the set of parameters for a SASE FEL operating at the Compton wavelength.

## 2 Gain length for the optimized beta-function

Let us consider an axisymmetric electron beam with a current $`I`$, and a Gaussian distribution in transverse phase space and in energy . The focusing structure in the undulator is a superposition of the natural undulator focusing and an external alternating-gradient focusing. The eigenvalue equation  is valid under the following condition :

$$\frac{L_\mathrm{f}}{2\pi \beta }\mathrm{min}(1,\frac{\lambda _r}{2\pi ϵ})$$

where $`L_\mathrm{f}`$ is the period of the external focusing structure, $`\beta `$ is an average beta-function, $`ϵ`$ is the rms emittance of the electron beam, and $`\lambda _r`$ is the FEL resonant wavelength. The resonance condition is written as:

$$\lambda _r=\frac{\lambda _\mathrm{w}(1+K^2)}{2\gamma ^2}.$$
(1)
Here $`\lambda _\mathrm{w}`$ is the undulator period, $`\gamma `$ is relativistic factor, and $`K`$ is the rms undulator parameter:

$$K=0.934\lambda _\mathrm{w}[\mathrm{cm}]B_{\mathrm{rms}}[\mathrm{T}],$$
(2)
$`B_{\mathrm{rms}}`$ being the rms undulator field.

In what follows we assume that the beta-function is optimized so that the FEL gain length takes the minimal value for given wavelength, beam and undulator parameters. Under this condition the solution of the eigenvalue equation for the field gain length111There is also a notion of the power gain length which is twice shorter. can be approximated as follows:

$$L_gL_{g0}(1+\delta ),$$
(3)
where

$$L_{g0}=1.67\left(\frac{I_A}{I}\right)^{1/2}\frac{(ϵ_n\lambda _\mathrm{w})^{5/6}}{\lambda _r^{2/3}}\frac{(1+K^2)^{1/3}}{KA_{JJ}},$$
(4)
and

$$\delta =131\frac{I_A}{I}\frac{ϵ_n^{5/4}}{\lambda _r^{1/8}\lambda _\mathrm{w}^{9/8}}\frac{\sigma _\gamma ^2}{(KA_{JJ})^2(1+K^2)^{1/8}}.$$
(5)
The following notations are introduced here: $`I_A=17`$ kA is the Alfven current, $`ϵ_n=\gamma ϵ`$ is the rms normalized emittance, $`\sigma _\gamma =\sigma _{_{}}/mc^2`$ is the rms energy spread (in units of the rest energy), $`A_{JJ}=1`$ for a helical undulator and $`A_{JJ}=J_0(K^2/2(1+K^2))J_1(K^2/2(1+K^2))`$ for a planar undulator, $`J_0`$ and $`J_1`$ are the Bessel functions of the first kind.

The formula (3) provides an accuracy better than 5 % in the domain of parameters defined as follows

$$1<\frac{2\pi ϵ}{\lambda _r}<5$$
(6)
$$\delta <2.5\left\{1\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{2\pi ϵ}{\lambda _r}\right)^2\right]\right\}$$
(7)
Note that the condition (6) is usually satisfied in realistic designs of VUV and X-ray FELs when one does optimization for the shortest wavelength (defining the total undulator length). The condition (7) is practically not a limitation. To illustrate the accuracy of the formula (3) we present a numerical example. The following nominal operating point is chosen: $`\lambda _r=1`$ nm, $`\lambda _\mathrm{w}=3`$ cm, $`K=1`$, $`I=2.5`$ kA, $`ϵ_n=2\mu `$m, $`\sigma _{_{}}=1`$ MeV, energy is 2.8 GeV, undulator is planar. We scan over different parameters and compare the gain length calculated with formula (3) and by solving the eigenvalue equation . The results are presented in Figs. 1-6.

We also present here an approximate expression for the optimal beta-function (an accuracy is about 10 % in the above mentioned parameter range):

$$\beta _{\mathrm{opt}}11.2\left(\frac{I_A}{I}\right)^{1/2}\frac{ϵ_n^{3/2}\lambda _\mathrm{w}^{1/2}}{\lambda _rKA_{JJ}}(1+8\delta )^{1/3}$$
(8)
Note that dependence of the gain length on beta-function is rather weak when $`\beta >\beta _{\mathrm{opt}}`$.

Finally, let us note that the saturation length cannot be directly found from the eigenvalue equation. However, with an accuracy 10-20 % one can accept the following estimate:

$$L_{\mathrm{sat}}10L_g$$
(9)
## 3 Influence of quantum diffusion in an undulator on saturation length

Energy spread growth due to the quantum fluctuations of the spontaneous undulator radiation can be an important effect  in future SASE FELs. The rate of the energy diffusion is given by :

$$\frac{d\sigma _\gamma ^2}{dz}=\frac{14}{15}\lambda \text{ }_\mathrm{c}r_\mathrm{e}\gamma ^4\kappa _\mathrm{w}^3K^2F(K),$$
(10)
where $`\lambda \text{ }_\mathrm{c}=3.86\times 10^{11}`$ cm, $`r_\mathrm{e}=2.82\times 10^{13}`$ cm, $`\kappa _\mathrm{w}=2\pi /\lambda _\mathrm{w}`$, and

$`F(K)`$ $`=`$ $`1.42K+(1+1.50K+0.95K^2)^1\mathrm{for}helicalundulator`$
$`F(K)`$ $`=`$ $`1.70K+(1+1.88K+0.80K^2)^1\mathrm{for}planarundulator`$ (11)
To estimate the FEL saturation length, we accept the following scheme. First, we neglect energy diffusion and find a zeroth order approximation to the saturation length from (9), (3)-(5). Then we calculate an induced energy spread in the middle of the undulator from (10), add it quadratically to the initial energy spread, and find a new expression for $`\delta `$. Then, using (9), (3)-(5), we find the first approximation to the saturation length. Then we do the next iteration, etc. Finally, the saturation length can be estimated as

$$L_{\mathrm{sat}}10L_{g0}\frac{1+\delta }{1\delta _q},$$
(12)
where

$$\delta _q=5.5\times 10^4\left(\frac{I_A}{I}\right)^{3/2}\frac{\lambda \text{ }_\mathrm{c}r_\mathrm{e}ϵ_n^2}{\lambda _r^{11/4}\lambda _\mathrm{w}^{5/4}}\frac{(1+K^2)^{9/4}F(K)}{KA_{JJ}^3}$$
(13)
Note that in the latter formula the powers are somewhat simplified. Comparing Eqs. (9) and (12), we can introduce an effective parameter

$$\delta _{\mathrm{eff}}=\frac{\delta +\delta _q}{1\delta _q},$$
(14)
which should be used instead of $`\delta `$ in (7) to check the applicability range and in (8) to estimate the optimal beta-function.

Although formula (12) is rather crude estimate, it can be used for quick orientation in the parameter space with a posteriori check using a numerical simulation code.

## 4 Examples of SASE FEL optimization

### 4.1 Optimized FEL with a negligible energy spread

Formulas, presented in the previous Sections, can be used for the optimization of undulator parameters as soon as a specific type of the undulator is chosen. We demonstrate such a possibility with the planar NdFeB undulator of which magnetic field can be described by the following formula :

$$B_{\mathrm{max}}[\mathrm{T}]=3.694\mathrm{exp}\left[5.068\frac{g}{\lambda _\mathrm{w}}+1.52\left(\frac{g}{\lambda _\mathrm{w}}\right)^2\right]\mathrm{for}0.1<g/\lambda _\mathrm{w}<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1},$$
(15)
where $`g`$ is the undulator gap. The rms value of the parameter $`K`$ is given by Eq. (2) with $`B_{\mathrm{rms}}=B_{\mathrm{max}}/\sqrt{2}`$.

We assume that the energy spread effect on the FEL operation can be neglected ($`\delta ,\delta _q0`$). Then, using (3), (2) and (15), we minimize the gain length for a given undulator gap. The optimal undulator period is found to be

$$(\lambda _\mathrm{w})_{\mathrm{opt}}[\mathrm{cm}]1+2g[\mathrm{cm}]\mathrm{for}g>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.5}\mathrm{cm}$$
(16)
The optimal value of $`K`$ is then defined from (15) and (2), the electron beam energy - from (1), and the optimal beta-function - from (8). The minimal gain length can be expressed (in practical units) as follows:

$$(L_g)_{\mathrm{min}}[\mathrm{m}]20\frac{ϵ_n^{5/6}[\mu \mathrm{m}]g^{1/2}[\mathrm{cm}]}{I^{1/2}[\mathrm{kA}]\lambda _r^{2/3}[\mathrm{\AA }]}.$$
(17)
Using estimate of the saturation length (9), we find the minimal wavelength at which SASE FEL can saturate within the given undulator length $`L_\mathrm{w}`$:

$$(\lambda _r)_{\mathrm{min}}[\mathrm{\AA }]3\times 10^3\frac{ϵ_n^{5/4}[\mu \mathrm{m}]g^{3/4}[\mathrm{cm}]}{I^{3/4}[\mathrm{kA}]L_\mathrm{w}^{3/2}[\mathrm{m}]}$$
(18)
### 4.2 SASE FEL at the Compton wavelength

Another example is the optimization of sub-Angstrom FELs for which the effect of quantum diffusion in the undulator can play an important role. We consider the case when the energy spread is dominated by the quantum diffusion, and neglect initial energy spread ($`\delta 0`$). Optimizing undulator period and parameter $`K`$ in (12), we get the following estimate for the minimal wavelength222One can notice the difference with more crude estimate presented in :

$$(\lambda _r)_{\mathrm{min}}^\mathrm{q}[\mathrm{\AA }]\frac{4ϵ_n[\mu \mathrm{m}]}{I^{3/5}[\mathrm{kA}]L_\mathrm{w}^{2/5}[\mathrm{m}]}$$
(19)
Note that in some cases the optimal undulator parameters can be impractical. In any case, the estimate (19) gives a lower limit. The following numerical examples show that one can be close to this limit with technically feasible undulator parameters.

Let us consider the electron beam parameters (peak current and emittance) assumed in . One of the examples, considered in , is a SASE FEL operating at $`\lambda _r=0.28\mathrm{\AA }`$ with $`I=5\mathrm{kA}`$ and $`ϵ_n=0.3\mu \mathrm{m}`$. Another example is even more ambitious: $`\lambda _r=0.12\mathrm{\AA }`$ with $`I=5\mathrm{kA}`$ and $`ϵ_n=0.1\mu \mathrm{m}`$.

We try to push the wavelength closer to the extreme given by Eq. (19). In our first example we assume $`I=5\mathrm{kA}`$ and $`ϵ_n=0.3\mu \mathrm{m}`$. With these parameters the wavelength $`\lambda _r=0.1\mathrm{\AA }`$ can be reached at the electron beam energy 23 GeV in a planar undulator with $`\lambda _\mathrm{w}=2`$ cm and $`K=1`$ (with the gap $`g=0.7`$ cm according to (15) and (2)). The optimal beta-function is about 40 m, and the saturation length is estimated at 160 m.

The second example is a SASE FEL operating at the Compton wavelength, $`\lambda _r=\lambda _\mathrm{c}=0.0234\mathrm{\AA }`$ (photon energy is 0.5 MeV). We assume the electron beam with $`I=5\mathrm{kA}`$ and $`ϵ_n=0.1\mu \mathrm{m}`$, the energy is 40 GeV. We choose a helical undulator with $`\lambda _\mathrm{w}=`$ 2 cm and $`K=0.7`$. The optimal beta-function is about 35 m, and the saturation is reached within 200 m. Our estimates show that quantum effects, other than energy diffusion, give small corrections to the classical description and can be neglected.


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# First results with the IOTA3 imaging interferometer: The spectroscopic binaries 𝜆 Vir and WR 140

## 1 Introduction

Only two optical (visible and infrared) interferometers have published results combining three or more separated telescopes, the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (Baldwin et al. 1996) and the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (Benson et al. 1997). Combining more than two telescopes is crucial in order to measure the closure phase, a phase quantity that is uncorrupted by atmospheric turbulence and necessary for image reconstruction in “very long baseline interferometry” (Jennison 1958; Monnier 2000); indeed, closure phase lies at the heart of so-called “self-calibration” techniques widely used in the radio (e.g., Readhead et al. 1980; Cornwell & Wilkinson 1981).

Here we present the first scientific results of the upgraded 3-telescope IOTA interferometer (Traub et al. 2003), with the new integrated-optics combiner IONIC-3 (Berger et al. 2003) for precise measurements of visibilities and closure phases. IOTA has much greater near-infrared sensitivity (demonstrated H mag 7) than the other imaging arrays, allowing new observational programs including imaging of young stellar objects, mass determinations of low-mass binaries, and mapping photospheric surface structures of red giants. After describing our novel instrumentation, we present the first resolved observations for the A-star binary $`\lambda `$ Vir and colliding wind system WR 140 and discuss the significance of our findings. Here we alert the astronomical community to the need for radial velocity follow-up of these specific sources as well as to the new research opportunities available with the IOTA3 array.

## 2 Observations and Analysis

All the data presented were obtained using the IOTA (Infrared-Optical Telescope Array) interferometer (Traub et al. 2003), which is operated by a consortium of institutions, most notably the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The 0.45-m telescopes are movable among 17 stations along 2 orthogonal linear arms (telescopes A & C can move along the 35-m northeastern arm, while Telescope B moves along the 15-m southeastern arm), allowing an aperture 35m$`\times `$15m to be synthesized (corresponding to an angular resolution of $``$5$`\times `$12 milliarcseconds at 1.65$`\mu `$m). Capping a long development (e.g., Schloerb 1990), the third telescope (“C”) was fully incorporated on UT 2002 February 23 and now allows visibilities on three baselines and one closure phase to be measured simultaneously. The initial observations used a prototype integrated optical (IO) combiner (e.g., Kern et al. 1997; Berger et al. 2001) which operated only with polarized light. The upgraded combiner IONIC-3 corrected this deficiency in 2002 November, and all observations presented here were obtained in unpolarized light.

We only just introduce IONIC-3 (Berger et al. 2003) here; an engineering paper with detailed description of the IO component and its performance is in preparation (Berger et al. 2004). Light from each telescope is focused into a dedicated single-mode fiber, and the three fibers are aligned using a silicon v-groove array mated to the planar waveguides on the IO device. The optical circuit acts to split the light from each telescope before recombining each telescope pair (AB,BC,AC) at 3 IO couplers. This “pair-wise” combination scheme leads to 6-interferometric channels (two for each baseline), where the interference fringes are temporally-modulated by scanning piezo mirrors placed in two of the telescope beams; a sensitive HgCdTe (Rockwell PICNIC) array (Pedretti et al. 2004a, submitted) detects the signals, and data are recorded by a vme-based control system linked to a Sun workstation.

We followed established observing procedures, as outlined in previous IOTA publications (Coudé du Foresto et al. 1997; Millan-Gabet et al. 2001): observations of target and nearby calibrator stars were interspersed to calibrate slowly varying system visibilities and instrumental closure phases. The science targets presented here were observed using a standard H band filter ($`\lambda _0=1.65\mu `$m, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =0.30\mu `$m); Table 1 contains other observing details. Figure 1 shows the (u,v)-coverage obtained during each epoch for each science target.

Reduction of the $`𝒱^2`$ data was carried out using an Interactive Data Language (IDL) implementation of the method outlined by Coudé du Foresto et al. (1997). In short, we measured the power spectrum of each interferogram (proportional to the target $`𝒱^2`$), after correcting for intensity fluctuations and subtracting out bias terms from read noise, residual intensity fluctuations, and photon noise (e.g., Perrin 2003). To assure good closure phase measurement, we required that interferograms be detected on $`2`$ baselines, a condition nearly always maintained by a realtime fringe packet “tracker” (Pedretti et al. 2004b, in preparation). Lastly, the data pipeline applied a correction for the variable flux ratios for each baseline by using a transfer matrix (based on single-beam flux measurements; e.g., Coudé du Foresto et al. 1997; Monnier 2001). We have studied the absolute calibration accuracy by observing single stars of known size and found a systematic error of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$`𝒱^2`$$`=0.10`$ (e.g., 5% error in visibility for unresolved sources) under the worst observing conditions; this error has been combined (in quadrature) with the statistical error for fitting purposes. Improved analysis methods should achieve $`\stackrel{<}{_{}}`$1% errors eventually, since we are using single-mode fibers.

We followed the method of Baldwin et al. (1996) for calculating the complex triple amplitude in deriving the closure phase, explicitly guaranteeing “fringe frequency closure” ($`\nu _{AB}+\nu _{BC}+\nu _{CA}=0`$). While photon-noise bias correction is not necessary for the IONIC-3 (“pair-wise”) combiner, the instrumental closure phase must be determined empirically. The miniature dimensions of the IO component have minimized drifts to less than 1 degree over many hours; chromaticity effects, however, limit our absolute precision when the calibrator and source are not of the same spectral type due to different “effective wavelengths.” Engineering tests indicate that the instrumental closure phase ($`\mathrm{\Phi }_{CP}`$) varies systematically by $`1.4\pm 0.3`$ degrees between a hot star (B8) and a cool star (M3) when using the broadband H filter. While we minimize these errors by using calibrators matched to the spectral type of the target, a conservative systematic error of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_{CP}=0.75`$ degs was adopted here to approximate our expected residual level of miscalibration. Lastly, the sign of our closure phase ($`\mathrm{\Phi }_{AB}+\mathrm{\Phi }_{BC}+\mathrm{\Phi }_{CA}`$ for baseline triangle connecting telescopes A$``$B$``$C$``$A) was calibrated using the well-known binary stars Capella and Matar (Hummel et al. 1994, 1998).

## 3 Results and Discussion

With calibrated $`𝒱^2`$ and closure phases for each target, a static binary star model (separation, position angle, brightness ratio) was fitted to the data for each given epoch, assuming the calibration errors given in the previous section and ignoring bandwidth-smearing effects. Table 2 contains the results of our fits based on a maximum-likelihood approach giving equal weights to the visibility data and closure phases. Explicitly, the probability of a given set of parameters was approximated by: $`\mathrm{Probability}exp(\frac{\chi _{\mathrm{Vis}^2}^2}{\mathrm{minimum}(\chi _{\mathrm{Vis}^2}^2)}\frac{\chi _{\mathrm{CP}}^2}{\mathrm{minimum}(\chi _{\mathrm{CP}}^2)})`$. This normalization is equivalent to increasing the data errors to force the $`\chi ^2`$/DOF$`=1`$, and conservatively estimates errors in the context of an incomplete error model. The most probable values with 1-sigma errors bars (68.4% confidence interval) were calculated for each parameter (separation, position angle, brightness ratio) by integrating over the other variables, a standard practice referred to as marginalizing over these variables.

Based on their brightness and color temperatures, the component stars of both binaries are expected to be unresolved here ($`\stackrel{<}{_{}}0.5`$ mas); this assumption, as well as neglecting bandwidth-smearing, may not remain valid if the data precision is improved significantly. The $`𝒱^2`$ and closure phases for a subset of the data are shown in Figure 2 along with the best-fitting model prediction. We note that $`\lambda `$ Vir, which has a $`207`$ day period, is not completely static during each observing “epoch.” With complete orbital phase coverage, this deficiency will be corrected by solving for the full orbital elements by fitting directly to the visibilities, closure phases, and radial velocities, a procedure outlined in detail by Hummel et al. (1998) and Boden et al. (1999).

The radio community developed interferometric imaging techniques (e.g., hybrid mapping) capable of reobtaining lost individual phases (e.g., Haniff et al. 1987). As demonstrated by Baldwin et al. (1996), these methods can be applied successfully to optical interferometers as well. We present the first aperture synthesis images from IOTA3 in Figure 3, depicting $`\lambda `$ Vir for each epoch. The images are constructed iteratively starting with zero initial phases and using the measured closure phases for self-calibration. CLEAN deconvolution was applied using an elliptical Gaussian CLEAN beam. Full details of the image-making process for this source (as well as the binary Capella) can be found in Kraus (2003). The presented maps are consistent with the binary parameters found through direct fitting, and demonstrate the imaging capability of the IOTA3+IONIC-3 system, currently the most sensitive infrared imaging interferometer in the world.

With this new imaging capability, we begin to study binary stars which have never been resolved before and which represent unique stellar systems whose properties can shed new light on rare and/or short-lived phases of stellar evolution.

$`\lambda `$ Vir is a well-known spectroscopic binary (period 207 days, Stickland 1976) with similar components of spectral type early Am (both are metallic-lined, Abt 1961). The stars exhibit the curious property that one is sharp-lined and the other broad-lined, which makes them easily distinguishable spectroscopically. IOTA3 observations will allow a determination of the absolute properties of the components once the full orbit is established. Fundamental stellar parameters, such as the system distance (independent of Hipparcos) and the individual masses and absolute near-IR luminosities, can be determined through a combination of the radial velocity orbit, astrometric orbit, and brightness ratio. Further, these properties can be compared directly against models of stellar evolution to derive the age of the system. The very different projected rotational velocities of the components is of special interest for these Am stars, enabling unique tests of current theories of tidal evolution (Tassoul & Tassoul 1997; Zahn & Bouchet 1989, and references therein).

WR 140 is a prototypical colliding-wind binary source consisting of a Wolf-Rayet (WC7) and an O4-5 star in a highly-eccentric $``$7.9 yr orbit, and has been extensively studied in the radio, infrared, optical, ultra-violet, and X-rays (e.g., Moffat et al. 1987; Williams et al. 1990; White & Becker 1995). Notably, infrared emission appears and fades in conjunction with periastron passage, explained by transient dust formation in the dense shock-compressed gas at the wind-wind interface (Williams et al. 1990; Usov 1991; Tuthill et al. 1999). This process was captured in a series of high-resolution near-infrared images by Monnier et al. (2002), revealing an eastward moving arc of dust consistent with the O-star being roughly east of the WR star at periastron. The O-star is expected to be on (nearly) the opposite side of the WR star now as compared to periastron, which can be reconciled with the position angle found here (PA 152°) only if the WR star is fainter than the O-star at 1.65$`\mu `$m (as expected by some workers; e.g. Williams et al. 1990). We intend to combine future high-precision interferometer observations with new radial velocity data (e.g., Marchenko et al. 2003) to derive component masses and a distance estimate, fundamental parameters for these systems needed for definitive interpretation of data across the electromagnetic spectrum.

## 4 Conclusions

We have reported first scientific results from the IOTA3 interferometer: newly-resolved separation, position angle, and flux ratio information for double-lined spectroscopic binary stars $`\lambda `$ Vir and WR 140. Using a preliminary data reduction pipeline, calibration is sufficient for model-fitting and aperture-synthesis imaging using hybrid mapping techniques. New observations are being pursued in order to derive precise component masses and distance estimates by combining interferometric and radial velocity data. All the visibility and closure phase data here have been converted to the new FITS format for Optical Interferometry data (OI-FITS) 111http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/$``$jsy1001/exchange/  and are available upon request.

The authors gratefully acknowledge critical support from SAO, NASA, and NSF (AST-0138303). EP was supported by a SAO Predoctoral fellowship, JDM by a CfA fellowship, and RM-G, J-PB, and SR through NASA Michelson Fellowships. GT acknowledges partial support from NASA’s MASSIF SIM Key project (JPL 1240033). In addition, we acknowledge useful contributions from B. Arezki, A. Delboulbe, C. Gil, S. Gluck, E. Laurent, R. B. Metcalf, and E. Tatulli. IONIC-3 was developed by LAOG and LETI in the context of the IONIC collaboration (LAOG, IMEP, LETI), funded by the CNRS and CNES (France). This publication makes use of data products from the 2MASS survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and IPAC/Caltech, funded by NASA and the NSF. This research has also used the SIMBAD database, NASA’s ADS Service, and services of the Michelson Science Center at Caltech (http://msc.caltech.edu).


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# A system for reflection in C++

## 1 Classdesc

Object reflection allows straightforward implementation of serialisation (i.e. the creation of binary data representing objects that can be stored and later reconstructed), binding of scripting languages or GUI objects to ‘worker’ objects and remote method invocation. Serialisation, for example, requires knowledge of the detailed structure of the object. The member objects may be able to serialised (eg a dynamic array structure), but be implemented in terms of a pointer to a heap object. Also, one may be interested in serialising the object in a machine independent way, which requires knowledge of whether a particular bitfield is an integer or floating point variable.

Languages such as Objective C give objects reflection by creating class objects and implicitly including an isa pointer in objects of that class pointing to the class object. Java does much the same thing, providing all objects with the native (i.e. non-Java) method getClass() which returns the object’s class at runtime, as maintained by the virtual machine.

When using C++, on the other hand, at compile time most of the information about what exactly objects are is discarded. Standard C++ does provide a run-time type enquiry mechanism, however this is only required to return a unique signature for each type used in the program. Not only is this signature be compiler dependent, it could be implemented by the compiler enumerating all types used in a particular compilation, and so the signature would differ from program to program!

The solution to this problem lies (as it must) outside the C++ language per se, in the form of a separate program which parses an input program and emits function declarations that know about the structure of the objects inside. These are generically termed object descriptors. The object descriptor generator only needs to handle class, struct and union definitions. Anonymous structs used in typedefs are parsed as well. What is emitted in the object descriptor is a sequence of function calls for each base class and member, just as the compiler generated constructors and destructors are formed. Function overloading ensures that the correct sequence of actions is generated at compile time.

For instance, assume that your program had the following class definition:

```
class test1: base_t
{
  int x,y;
public:
  double z[100];
};

```

and you wished to generate a serialisation operator called pack. Then this program will emit the following function declaration for test1:

```
#include "pack_base.h"
void pack(pack_t *p, string nm, test1& v)
{
   pack(p,nm,(base_t)v);
   pack(p,nm+".x",v.x);
   pack(p,nm+".y",v.y);
   pack(p,nm+".z",v.z,100);
}

```

Thus, calling pack(p,"",var) where var is of type test1, will recursively descend the compound structure of the class type, until it reaches primitive data types which can be handled by the following generic template:

```
template <class T>
void pack(pack_t *p,string desc, T& arg)
{p->append((char*)&arg,sizeof(arg));}

```

given a utility routine pack\_t::append that adds a chunk of data to a repository of type pack\_t.

This can even be given an easier interface by defining the member template:

```
template <class T>
pack_t& pack_t::operator<<(T& x)
{::pack(this,"",x);}

```

so constructions like `buf << foo << bla;` will pack the objects foo and bla into the object buf.

At the time of writing, this system has been implemented as a part of the EcoLab simulation system. The pack and unpack operations work more or less as described. The type `xdr_pack`, derived from `pack_t` uses the standard unix XDR library to pack the buffer in a machine independent way. This allows checkpoint files to be transported between machines of different architectures, or to run the simulation in a client-server mode, with the client downloading a copy of the simulation whilst the simulation is in progress.

Also implemented is a `TCL_obj` class descriptor. When `TCL_obj` is called on an object, TCL111TCL is a well known scripting language — see http://dev.scriptics.com commands are created in the TCL interpreter that allow the C++ object’s members to be queried or set directly from the script. Moreover, provided member functions take the arguments `(int argc,char *argv[])` or no arguments at all, member functions can be called directly from the TCL script.

The Classdesc software can be used in other projects by “installing” EcoLab into a well known location, and using the classdesc command to generate the descriptors. It is planned to separate out a “slimmed-down” Classdesc product that leaves out most of the EcoLab support libraries.

## 2 Subtleties

### 2.1 Pointers

Pointers create difficulties for Classdesc, since pointers may point to a single object, an array of objects, functions, members or even nothing at all. When array sizes are known at compile time, Classdesc issues an object descriptor that loops over the elements, however arrays allocated dynamically on the heap through the use of new cannot be handled, even in principle. It turns out that one can distinguish between member pointers and normal pointers quite easily through overloading of object descriptors, however it proves impossible to distinguish between pointers to functions and pointers to objects at the overloading stage. It is too difficult for Classdesc to distinguish between function and object pointers, since the type definitions may be hidden behind typedefs in other files. All that can be done is to ignore pointer members and issue a runtime warning that an attempt was made to serialise a generic pointer.

This strategy misses an important use of pointers in representing data structures such as graph and trees. In this case, we may assume that pointers point to a valid object, or are NULL. However, we must ask the programmer to flag the data types that have this property. Currently, this is implemented in the pack descriptor by a macro `Single_Obj_Ptr`, which takes the typename as an argument. This has the disadvantage of polluting global namespace, and requiring different macros for different descriptors. An alternative approach (not yet implemented) is to ask the programmer to derive the datatype from a particular given type (let’s say `single_obj_ptr`). Then the generic pointer descriptor can attempt to do a `dynamic_cast` — if the cast succeeds, the pointer points to a valid object, or is NULL222at least that is what the programmer is promising, and if the cast fails, then the pointer may be anything, and should be ignored.

### 2.2 Dynamic Types

Dynamic data types pose a special problem for Classdesc, since the actual storage is usually separate from the variable representing it. The standard method of handling dynamic types inherited from C is via pointers to memory allocated by new or malloc(). As mentioned in the previous section, Classdesc cannot handle this method of implementing dynamic data. In a more general sense, this method should be discouraged, since it is very easy to create dangling pointers and memory leaks.

In C++, a better method is to encapsulate a dynamic type in a class. This has the following advantages:

1. Calls to new and delete can be properly balanced, by ensuring the delete appears in the destructor.
2. Usual pointer syntax can be preserved by defining `operator[](int)`, `operator*()`, `operator`(int)+, `operator++(int)`, with the possibility of runtime range checking built in.
3. Specialised descriptors can be supplied for this class, which will integrate neatly with those produced by Classdesc. One may use the pragma #pragma omit to indicate that a particular type already has a descriptor defined.

### 2.3 Member privacy

Descriptors need access to all members of an object, including private and protected ones. Since in C++ class namespaces are closed by design (no new members can be added, except by inheritance), descriptors need to be placed a global or an open namespace. This means that friend declarations need to be added to all class definitions with private or protected areas. This is handled by an auxiliary program insert-friend that inserts the macro call CLASSDESC\_ACCESS(class name) into class definitions, and CLASSDESC\_ACCESS\_TEMPLATE(class name) into template class definitions. The intention is for the programmer to define macros similar to the following:

```
#define CLASSDESC_ACCESS(type)\
friend void pack(pack_t *,eco_string,type&);\
friend void unpack(unpack_t *,eco_string,type&);

#define CLASSDESC_ACCESS_TEMPLATE(type)\
friend void pack<>(pack_t *,eco_string,type&);\
friend void unpack<>(unpack_t *,eco_string,type&);

```

The script fix-includes parses all standard header libraries, and if private or protected members exist within that header, places a modified version with the CLASSDESC macros into a separate include directory. This works reasonably well in practice, provided the authors of the header files have not done anything too tricky with macro processing.

## 3 Current Status

Classdesc is currently a part of the EcoLab simulation system. EcoLab is an open source project, and is available from the EcoLab website. Classdesc is contained within a subdirectory of EcoLab, so it is planned that at distribution time, a separate Classdesc distribution be created for each EcoLab distribution.

There is an email discussion list, which you can subscribe to by sending the message “subscribe ecolab-list” to majordomo@explode.unsw.edu.au. You can also register as a developer by emailing R.Standish@unsw.edu.au. This will allow you to access the code as it is being developed, and submit your own code changes. EcoLab is managed by Peter Miller’s Aegis code management system, which allows multiple developers to work independently on the code.


text:
# Variations in Star Formation History and the Red Giant Branch Tip

## 1 Introduction

The tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) marks the onset of helium fusion in stars. For old, low-mass stars this is an explosive event called the helium flash. During the helium flash these stars undergo a quick readjustment of their interiors before they begin helium burning on the horizontal branch. Therefore, the TRGB is manifested as a sharp discontinuity in the RGB luminosity function (LF). Theoretical models and observational data agree that the I-band absolute magnitude of the TRGB is located at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})4.0\pm 0.1`$ for metallicities in the range $`2.2[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.7`$ and ages between 2 and 15 Gyr (Da Costa & Armandroff 1990; Lee, Freedman, & Madore 1993; Bellazzini, Ferraro, & Pancino 2001). The reason for this is twofold. First, the mass of the degenerate helium core and hence, the stellar luminosity, is approximately constant in this age range. Second, the stellar spectrum peaks near the I-band in these age and metallicity ranges making $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ approximately constant. Therefore, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ can be used as a standard candle for measuring distances to resolved stellar populations.

Numerous studies have taken advantage of the TRGB standard candle to measure distances to galaxies in the Local Group and beyond (e.g. M$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ndez et al. 2002; Karachentsev et al. 2002; Sakai et al. 1997; Cioni et al. 2000; Sarajedini et al. 2002; Jerjen & Rejkuba 2001; Ma$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{i}}`$z-Apell$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{a}}`$niz, Cieza, & MacKenty 2002; Sakai, Zaritsky, & Kennicutt 2000; Sakai, Madore, & Freedman 1999). Such distance measurments are important for calibrating other distance measurement techniques, for measuring the local velocity field (M$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ndez et al. 2002; Karachentsev et al. 2002), and for determining accurate SFHs of the galaxy stellar populations. However, many of these studies make an assumption that the target RGB populations occupy the required age and metallicity ranges.

In this paper, we examine the effects of star formation history (SFH) variations on the TRGB-distance method. In particular, we generate synthetic color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for stellar populations with a range of ages and metallicities and employ standard observational techniques to determine the I magnitude of the TRGB. Since the distance to each synthetic population is known, we can quantitatively evaluate the systematic errors associated with the SFH variations on the TRGB-distance method. We define old stars as those having ages $`>10`$ Gyr, intermediate-age stars as those with ages between 2 and 7 Gyr, and young stars as those with ages $`<2`$ Gyr.

## 2 Methods

### 2.1 Synthetic color-magnitude diagrams

To generate synthetic CMDs, we use the StarFISH software introduced by Harris & Zaritsky (2001). Given an SFH, distance modulus, extinction law, reddening, initial mass function (IMF) slope and binary fraction, this code uses theoretical isochrones to generate photometry for artificial stellar populations. We adopt the Padova set of isochrones (Girardi et al. 2000) which cover metal abundances of Z = 0.0004, 0.001, 0.004, 0.008, 0.019, 0.030 and an age range of log(age/yr) = $`7.8010.25`$. These isochrones include evolution from the main sequence to either the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stage or carbon ignition so all of our synthetic CMDs contain AGB stars at luminosities higher than or comparable to that of the TRGB. To increase metallicity resolution we linearly interpolate between each metallicity pair resulting in another set of isochrones with the same ages but metallicities of Z = 0.0007, 0.0025, 0.006, 0.0135, and 0.0245. For simplicity and clarity, we use a distance modulus of zero, Salpeter IMF, binary fraction of 0.25, and zero reddening.

The StarFISH software populates isochrones with stars in a realistic manner; the probability of finding a star at any point along the isochrone depends on the IMF and on the evolutionary timescale of that particular point. To reproduce observational effects, the stars added to an isochrone are probabilistically removed and scattered according to photometry-dependent completeness rate and error tables.

### 2.2 Photometric errors and completeness

Generating accurate synthetic CMDs requires a proper analysis of how photometric errors and completeness fraction change with magnitude and color. When studying a real stellar population, this analysis is done with artificial star tests in which stars of known magnitudes and colors are placed in the original images and the data reduction is repeated. The completeness fraction is estimated from the number of recovered artificial stars whose colors and magnitudes are then compared to the input colors and magnitudes to estimate photometric errors (e.g. Aparicio & Gallart 1995).

Because the TRGB is a relatively confined region of the CMD the photometric errors and completeness fraction do not change significantly over the region of interest. Moreover, photometric errors are typically small in this region because it is usually one of the brightest features of a CMD. Crowding also is generally not severe in nearby dwarf galaxies and in the halos of LG galaxies where the TRGB-distance method is typically applied. However, when applying the TRGB-distance method to galaxies beyond the LG or in very crowded stellar regions nearby, the errors and completeness rate can be much more important. Investigating the effect of SFH variations on the TRGB in such cases is beyond the scope of the present study.

Given the previous considerations, we choose to use simple analytic functions for the photometric errors and completeness rate which are fairly typical of data taken with HST or ground-based telescopes (e.g. Aparicio & Gallart 1995; Sarajedini et al. 2002). These functions are plotted in Fig. 1 assuming the parameter values given below. Photometric errors are modeled with an exponential function of the form,

$$\sigma (M)=\kappa e^{\tau M},$$
(1)
where M is $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}`$ or $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{V}`$ and $`\kappa `$ and $`\tau `$ are constants. Given the boundary conditions $`\sigma (\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=8.0)=0.005`$ and $`\sigma (\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=1.5)=0.2`$, these constants take the values $`\kappa =0.11`$ and $`\tau =0.39`$. Completeness is modeled with the function,

$$f(M_V)=\frac{2}{\pi }\mathrm{arctan}[\alpha (M_VM_{V_0})],$$
(2)
where $`\alpha `$ is a shape parameter that affects the steepness of the fall-off and $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{V}_0}`$ is the magnitude at which the completeness equals 0%. For all our CMDs we use $`\alpha `$ = 2.0 and $`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{V}_0}`$ = 1.5 which yield a completeness rate of 50% at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{V}`$ = 1.0.

Each star is probabilistically removed according to the completeness fraction at the star’s $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{V}`$ magnitude. If a star is kept, its photometry is scattered by randomly drawing from a Gaussian distribution with standard deviation equal to its error given by Equ. 1.

### 2.3 Calibration of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$

To use the TRGB as a distance indicator it must be calibrated by using nearby stellar populations whose distances are known from other independent techniques. Several studies have done just that. Da Costa & Armandroff (1990) used the RGBs of eight Galactic globular clusters to derive the I-band bolometric correction as a function of $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ color, the bolometric magnitude of the TRGB as a function of \[Fe/H\], and \[Fe/H\] as a function of $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ color at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=3.0`$. Using a slightly revised version of the latter relation more appropriate for galaxies, Lee et al. (1993) demonstrated that the TRGB method had the precision of primary distance indicators like Cepheids and RR Lyraes. Most recently, Bellazzini et al. (2001) derived a new empirical relation between $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ and \[Fe/H\] based on the largest IR database of Galactic globular cluster RGBs and calibrated over a larger range of metallicities.

Since we are studying CMDs generated from theoretical isochrones, it is logical to use a theoretical rather than empirical calibration of the TRGB. In Fig. 2, we plot the I-band absolute magnitude of the TRGB as a function of age for different metallicities. These data are taken from the summary tables of the Padova isochrones. For ages between 2 and 15 Gyr and $`1.7[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.7`$, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ lies in the range $`4.0\pm 0.05`$, where 0.05 is the standard deviation. We use this theoretical estimate of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ as a fiducial value when analyzing our synthetic CMDs.

It is worthwhile to take a closer look at Fig. 2. The qualitative behavior of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ may be completely explained by considering the results of Sweigart, Greggio, & Renzini (1990). They examined in detail the dependence of the core mass on the total stellar mass at the TRGB. They found that for stars massive enough to avoid the degenerate conditions that lead to the He flash, the core mass is approximately linearly proportional to the total mass. For low-mass stars, the core mass is completely degenerate and therefore insensitive to total mass. But for stars in between these two regimes, known as the RGB phase transition, the core mass increases quickly with decreasing total mass. Because the luminosity at the TRGB is so closely coupled to the core mass, it follows the same pattern. Since the total mass at the TRGB decreases with age, the luminosity has a similar dependence on age as it does on total mass. Finally, since $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}`$ is proportional to luminosity, except when the metal abundance is high enough that line-blanketing becomes significant in the I-band, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}`$ should depend on age the same way luminosity and core mass do.

This is exactly what is seen in Fig. 2. Up to an age of $`1`$ Gyr, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ becomes fainter with increasing age because the He core reaches ignition before degeneracy sets in. The RGB phase transition occurs between about 1 and 2 Gyr during which time the He core is partially degenerate and $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ brightens very quickly with age. After 2 Gyr, the core is completely degenerate and the basic stellar properties at the TRGB like radius, mass, and temperature change little with age. For $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]>0.7`$, line blanketing supresses $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$.

The exact age and duration of the RGB phase transition depends on the details of the stellar models. To demonstrate this point, in Fig. 3 we compare the RGB phase transition of the Padova isochrone set (solid lines) with that of the $`\mathrm{Y}^2`$ set (dotted; Yi et al. 2001). The metallicities in panels (a), (b), (c), and (d) are \[Fe/H\] = -1.7, -1.3, -0.7, and 0.0, respectively. We also show in panel (d) the Padova solar metallicity isochrone with no convective overshoot (dashed). In general, there is good agreement between the $`\mathrm{Y}^2`$ and Padova isochrones except for the no overshoot curve in panel (d) which predicts an earlier age and shorter duration for the transition. This is in agreement with Ferraro et al. (1995) who found that models without overshoot predict the transition to occur at $`0.6\pm 0.2`$ Gyr and last for $`0.3`$ Gyr.

To illustrate how the RGB phase transition could affect the TRGB-distance method, we show in Fig. 4 the evolution of the TRGB in the $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ plane from 0.1 Gyr to 17.8 Gyr. In this figure, ages of 1, 2, and 14 Gyr are marked by triangles, asterisks, and squares, respectively. For ages $``$ 0.14 Gyr, the TRGB is brighter than $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$ and it evolves to fainter magnitudes until $``$ 1 Gyr when the core mass at the TRGB becomes partially degenerate. At these young ages, the TRGB is substantially bluer than the TRGB of ages $`>`$ 2 Gyr. Hence, it would simply add background noise to a TRGB estimate which could be minimized by excluding stars bluer than a certain color, say $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_01.1`$ for \[Fe/H\] = $`1.7`$ and $`1.3`$ or $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_01.3`$ for \[Fe/H\] = $`0.7`$. The RGB phase transition occurs approximately between 1 and 2 Gyr. If a stellar population is observed at some point during this stage, the TRGB will be fainter than $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$. One could, in principle, measure the height of the RGB between the red clump (RC) and the TRGB to test if this was the case. However, the RC is not always detected and observational errors could prevent the use of the RGB length as an indicator especially for the late stages of the RGB transition.

To further illustrate our point, in Fig. 5 we plot the RGBs for \[Fe/H\] = $`1.3`$ and 2, 1.78, 1.58, and 1.41 Gyr. The largest color difference between the RGBs at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=3.0`$ is $`0.04`$ and the color error at this magnitude is $`\sigma _{\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I}}0.07`$. Therefore, under typical error conditions, these RGBs would be indistinguishable in the CMD of a galaxy with an unkown distance modulus. We will focus our attention on the ages of 1.58 and 1.78 Gyr when we construct our synthetic CMDs in later sections.

### 2.4 Determination of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$

For each synthetic CMD, we will measure $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ and compare it to the calibration from the previous section. At least six different techniques have been used in the literature to measure the magnitude of the TRGB. Each method searches for the discontinuity in the LF of RGB stars corresponding to the TRGB. Lee et al. (1993) introduced the use of the zero-sum Sobel kernel, \[$`2`$, 0, +2\], whose convolution with the LF has a maximum at the largest discontinuity in the LF. Prior to their work, people estimated the TRGB by eye, making it difficult to reproduce and assign errors to their results. A modified Sobel filter was used by Sakai, Madore, & Freedman (1996) with the definition

$$E(m)=\mathrm{\Phi }(m+\overline{\sigma })\mathrm{\Phi }(m\overline{\sigma }),$$
(3)
where $`\overline{\sigma }`$ is the average photometric error in the range m $`\pm `$ 0.5 mag and $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$(m) is a Gaussian-smoothed LF calculated as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(m)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma _i}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(m_im)^2}{2\sigma _i^2}\right].$$
(4)
In this context, each star has a Gaussian probability distribution centered at the star’s magnitude, $`m_i`$, with dispersion, $`\sigma _i`$. Stars with small errors have more strongly peaked Gaussians than stars with large errors. The total LF is then a sum of all the stars’ Gaussians.

Motivated by the sensitivity of the zero-sum Sobel filter to low-number counts, Frayn & Gilmore (2003) introduced a third method to find the TRGB. They fit a Gaussian cutoff to the LF in the region $`\pm `$1.0 mag of the Sobel filter’s determination of the TRGB. Their method was found to give more reliable results in the low-number count regime. Yet another method was used by Cioni et al. (2000) who estimated the TRGB to be the maximum of the second derivative of the binned LF plus a small systematic-error correction based on a model for the intrinsic LF. In addition to the Gaussian-smoothed Sobel filter described above, M$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ndez et al. (2002) estimated the TRGB magnitude using the method of maximum likelihood. They maximized the likelihood function on a grid of three parameters, including the magnitude of the TRGB, that described the intrinsic LF of their data. Finally, Sarajedini et al. (2002) used a simple slope-finding algorithm to estimate the TRGB magnitude.

All of the methods described above require a priori knowledge of the general location of the TRGB because there are other features of the LF, such as the red clump, AGB tip, AGB bump (Bellazzini 2002), and RGB bump (Bellazzini 2002; Monaco et al. 2002; Fusi Pecci 1990) which exhibit discontinuities that can be comparable in size to the TRGB. Each method’s accuracy and precision also depend on the signal-to-noise ratio at the TRGB, field-star contamination, and the number of AGB stars near the TRGB. Moreover, all are sensitive to low-number statistics (Madore & Freedman 1995).

Our goal is to test the sensitivity of the TRGB-distance method to variations in SFH rather than compare the different TRGB measurement techniques. Therefore, we simply adopt the technique of Sakai et al. (1997) because it is one of the most commonly used. This method involves applying the Gaussian-smoothed Sobel filter to the logarithmic LF and weighting the filter output by the Poisson noise at each magnitude. This enhances large edges relative to small edges (which are assumed to be noise). The highest peak in the filter response within one magnitude of our theoretically calibrated TRGB is taken to be the true TRGB. To minimize spurious detections due to low-number statistics, we require that at least 1000 stars be present within $`\pm 1`$ mag of the TRGB in each of our synthetic CMDs. This requirement applies to stars of all ages regardless of SFH so a purely old population will have no stars brighter than the TRGB whereas an intermediate-age population will have many stars brighter than the TRGB. This requirement also means that we must normalize the overall SFRs to high levels not found in the LG dwarf galaxies. However, this is inconsequential to the current study because we are concerned with the relative SFRs at various ages and metallicities. Small numbers of stars near the tip or any of the other problems mentioned above are beyond the scope of this work and have been examined in other papers (Madore & Freedman 1995, Frayn & Gilmore 2003).

To estimate the random error of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$, we follow the common technique of using the FWHM of a Gaussian fit to the peak in the edge detector response (Sakai et al. 1999). The total error of each of our TRGB estimates is then given by,

$$\sigma _{tot}^2=\sigma _{theory}^2+\sigma _{rand}^2,$$
(5)
where $`\sigma _{theory}`$ is the standard deviation of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ from the isochrones (0.05; see Fig. 2), and $`\sigma _{rand}`$ is the random error. For all models, $`\sigma _{rand}`$ ranges from $`0.030.09`$ and $`\sigma _{tot}`$ ranges from $`0.060.11`$.

## 3 The Effect of Age Variations on $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$

For each of the models discussed below, we plot the relative SFR normalized to the average background rate, the resulting synthetic CMD containing 10% of the stars, logarithmic LF, and edge detector output. The dashed line marks the position of the estimated TRGB value while the dotted line marks our theoretical calibration of $`4.0`$.

### 3.1 Delta-function bursts

We begin by simulating single-age, single-metallicity bursts at 2, 1.78, 1.58, and 1.41 Gyr each with \[Fe/H\] = $`1.3`$ (Fig. 6). Even when observational effects are taken into account, the TRGB becomes fainter as the age decreases. Since there is only one age in each case, the edge detector has no trouble accurately picking out the TRGB as can be seen by comparing the results with the theoretical isochrones of Fig. 5. Each TRGB estimate is well defined and unambiguous.

It is worth noting the gap between the TRGB and the AGB. It is evident as a lack of stars in the CMDs and a depression in the LF just above the TRGB. This gap is important because its presence makes it easier for the edge detector to find the TRGB by reducing the background level of AGB stars. The gap is not an artifact of the method but rather it is intrinsic to the isochrones which predict very rapid evolution on this part of the AGB. Interestingly, such a gap has been observed in Sextans B (Fig. 6 of M$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}\mathrm{ndez}`$ et al. 2002) and the Magellanic Clouds (Fig. 5 of Cioni et al. 2000).

### 3.2 Single Gaussian bursts

It is possible that a mix of ages could hide the effect described in the previous subsection. To investigate this we generated Gaussian bursts in age centered at the same ages as before, each with standard deviation of 0.2 Gyr and \[Fe/H\] = $`1.3`$ (Fig. 7). The edge detector is most sensitive to the largest discontinuity which is due to the dominant population, in this case the center of each Gaussian. In column 2 of Fig. 7, the presence of older stars pulls the derived TRGB up to a brighter magnitude than the equivalent delta-function burst. So we can expect that as the number of intermediate- and old-age stars increases, the number of young stars needed to significantly change the value of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ also increases. The resulting LFs are smoother and because there are several different “competing” TRGBs (one from each age), the discontinuity at each is smaller. Consequently, the peak in the edge detector output corresponding to the TRGB is not as prominent.

### 3.3 Multiple Gaussian bursts

We now add another level of complexity by simulating three background Gaussian bursts centered at 14.12, 7.08, and 1.58 Gyr. The oldest burst has a standard deviation of 2 Gyr and \[Fe/H\] = $`1.7`$, the intermediate burst has a standard deviation of 2 Gyr and \[Fe/H\] = $`1.4`$, and the young burst has a standard deviation of 1 Gyr and \[Fe/H\] = $`1.3`$. The SFR is zero outside the range $`0.0914.96`$ Gyr. First, each burst has an equal height as depicted in Fig. 8 (column 1). Then we add a short, quick burst by scaling the SFR between 1.33 and 1.68 Gyr to $`12`$ times (Fig. 8, column 2), $`25`$ times (Fig. 8, column 3), and $`35`$ times (Fig. 8, column 4) the average background rate. This young burst is timed so that the stars it forms are undergoing the RGB phase transition at the present time.

In the first and second cases, the TRGB is unambiguously detected very close to $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$. In the third case, when the young, quick burst is scaled to $`25`$ times the background, the edge detector responds almost equally to the TRGB for the quick burst (at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}3.7`$) and the TRGB for the older stars. In the fourth case, the edge detector responds primarily to the TRGB of the young population although the TRGB of the old population is still visible at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$. In a real stellar population this could easily be mistaken for noise due to AGB stars.

### 3.4 Constant star formation rate

Next we consider a constant SFR from 14.96 to 0.09 Gyr ago. To simulate the metallicity evolution of an LG dwarf galaxy, we use two different chemical enrichment laws (CELs). These laws are plotted in Fig. 9 and described below.

#### 3.4.1 Chemical enrichment law #1

Our first CEL is adapted from Aparicio et al. (1996) for our age range. The metal abundance increases from \[Fe/H\] = $`1.7`$ to $`0.7`$. Because our set of isochrones has discrete values of metallicity we approximate the smooth change of \[Fe/H\] with time by arranging the isochrones into age groups each with constant metallicity.

First, we use a constant SFR (Fig. 10, column 1). Here the TRGB is recovered accurately and precisely. Then we introduce a burst between 1.33 and 1.68 Gyr by scaling the SFR at these ages to 20 times (Fig. 10, column 2) and 30 times (Fig. 10, column 3) the background rate. In both cases, the younger, fainter TRGB is comparable in size to the older, brighter TRGB. Hence, the edge detector responds roughly equally to the TRGBs of the young and old populations but the young TRGB is slightly more dominant. This highlights the importance of careful examination of the edge detector output in the vicinity of the TRGB. If there are peaks of similar size in the output then the random error may be underestimated by simply fitting a Gaussian to the highest peak. Lastly, we scale the young burst up to 40 times the background rate (Fig. 10, column 4). Here the younger, fainter TRGB dominates the edge detector response.

#### 3.4.2 Chemical enrichment law #2

We repeat the procedure from the previous subsection using a different CEL that describes a more gradual metal enrichment (Fig. 9). The only change is that the final metal abundance is decreased to \[Fe/H\] = $`1.3`$. Since the average metallicity of this population is lower than before, the RGB is steeper and the upper AGB is shorter. As before, we start with a constant SFR (Fig. 11, column 1) and add a successively stronger burst between 1.33 and 1.68 Gyr. When the young burst is 20 times (Fig. 11, column 2) and 30 times (Fig. 11, column 3) the background rate, the edge detector appears stable and accurate. When the young burst is 40 times the background rate (Fig. 11, column 4), the edge detector output displays several peaks of comparable height but the highest is due to the TRGB of the young burst.

#### 3.4.3 No intermediate-age stars

If there were no intermediate-age stars, it should be easier for a young burst of star formation to move $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ to fainter magnitudes because there would be fewer stars populating the TRGB at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$. To check this we now investigate what happens when there is a constant SFR from $`6.6814.96`$ Gyr and $`1.681.33`$ Gyr with zero SFR everywhere else. The metallicity evolves from \[Fe/H\] = $`1.7`$ for ages $`>`$ 10.59 Gyr to $`1.4`$ for ages between 6.68 Gyr and 10.59 Gyr and then to $`0.9`$ for the young burst. We show in Fig. 12 that the TRGB is detected accurately and precisely when the young burst is equal to and 10 times larger than the old SFR. But when the young burst is 15 and 20 times larger, the edge detector responds only to the TRGB of the young burst.

Finally, we repeat the SFH from above except that the SFR between 6.68 Gyr and 10.59 Gyr is set to zero. When the young burst has the same SFR as the old burst the TRGB of the old burst is recovered correctly (Fig. 13, column 1). When the young SFR is scaled to five times the old SFR the discontinuity due to the young TRGB is slightly more significant than that due to the old TRGB (Fig. 13, column 2). The young TRGB dominates the edge detector output when the young SFR is 10 times (Fig. 13, column 3) and 15 times (Fig. 13, column 4) the old SFR.

## 4 The Effect of Metallicity Variations on $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$

### 4.1 Delta-function bursts

As before, we begin with single-metallicity, single-age bursts but we now vary the metallicity and hold the age constant at 10.00 Gyr. This age was chosen to ensure that the effects described in the previous section would not interfere with the results of this section. The burst in Fig. 14 (column 1) has a metallicity of \[Fe/H\] = $`0.7`$. For this case, the largest peak in the edge detector response lies at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}4.7`$. This peak must be coincident with the AGB tip rather than the TRGB otherwise there would be an unphysically large break in the power-law slope of the RGB LF at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}4.0`$. Hence, the second-largest peak in the edge detector response which lies at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.05\pm 0.06`$ must correspond to the TRGB; a fact which we are able to confirm because the masses of the synthetic stars are known.

When the metal abundance is increased to \[Fe/H\] = $`0.4`$ (Fig. 14, column 2), $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ is still close to the canonical value but has moved 0.1 mag fainter. Moreover, the slope of the RGB in the CMD has become so shallow that the tip of the AGB occurs at nearly the same magnitude as the TRGB. In the logarithmic LF, the TRGB has almost merged with the tip of the AGB which shows a slightly less significant discontinuity.

In Fig. 14 (column 3), the burst has solar metal abundance. Here there are no AGB stars past the TRGB so the final drop-off in the logarthmic LF is the TRGB rather than the AGB tip. If one were to assume the metallicity of this population was less than $`0.7`$, the TRGB brightness would be underestimated by 0.76 mag. An even greater underestimate would occur when \[Fe/H\] = 0.2 (Fig. 14, column 4), for which the recovered TRGB is over a full magnitude fainter than the canonical value. Note that in these two cases, we had to focus on the magnitude interval $`3.0\pm 1.0`$ rather than $`4.0\pm 1.0`$ because the slope of the RGB was so shallow.

The four cases above illustrate that the RGB becomes flatter as metallicity increases. This is a well-known phenomenon caused by line blanketing primarily in the V-band but also in the I-band due to the increased metal abundance.

### 4.2 Single Gaussian metallicity distribution

To investigate the effect of a spread in metallicities we simulated four Gaussian bursts in metallicity each centered on the same metallicities and with the same age as the delta-function bursts. The dispersion of each burst was 0.2 dex. Because our isochrones cover a discrete set of metallicities we can only sample each burst at these metallicities. This results in each CMD having several clearly defined RGBs for each metallicity.

When the Gaussian distribution of metallicities is centered on \[Fe/H\] = $`0.7`$ and $`0.4`$, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ lies within 1$`\sigma `$ of the canonical value (Fig. 15, columns 1 and 2). But when the peak metallicity is \[Fe/H\] = 0.0 and 0.2 (Fig. 15, columns 3 and 4), the estimated TRGB is about 0.76 mag fainter than the canonical value. In the last case, the TRGB is recovered 0.4 mag brighter than the equivalent delta-function burst. This may be due to the presence of more metal-poor stars populating the TRGB at brighter magnitudes.

Next, we set the SFR in each metallicity bin to be constant from ages $`9.4414.96`$ Gyr (Fig. 16). This has the effect of smearing out the RGB of each metallicity. The results are identical except that the recovered TRGB is about 0.1 mag fainter for peak metallicities of \[Fe/H\] = 0.0 and 0.2.

### 4.3 Uniform metallicity distribution

Next we examine the case of a uniform metallicity distribution and constant SFR from $`9.4414.96`$ Gyr in the past (Fig. 17, column 1). The random error is small and the canonical value lies within the total uncertainty of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$. The result is the same when we increase the SFR at solar abundance to five times the background value (Fig. 17, column 2). But at 10 and 20 times the background value (Fig. 17, columns 3 and 4), the edge detector is biased toward the TRGB of this burst. Note that in these latter two cases, the canoncial TRGB due to lower metallicities is still somewhat visible in the edge detector output.

Using the same uniform metallicity distribution and SFR, we repeated the previous procedure but lowered the metallicity of the burst to \[Fe/H\] = $`0.1`$ (Fig. 18). When the burst is five and 10 times stronger than the background rate, the TRGB is close to the canonical value. But when the burst is 20 times the background, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ moves 0.35 mag fainter than the canonical value.

Repeating the procedure with a slightly different metallicity distribution which is uniform but has no stars with \[Fe/H\] $`<0.9`$, the canonical TRGB is recovered to within the total error (Fig. 19, column 1). If the SFR at solar abundance is again increased by a factor of five (Fig. 19, column 2) then the discontinuity due to the TRGB of the burst is larger than that due to the canonical TRGB. When the burst is increased to 10 times (Fig. 19, column 3) and 20 times (Fig. 19, column 4) the background rate the edge detector response is unambiguously biased to fainter magnitudes.

### 4.4 Multiple Gaussian metallicity distribution

To better simulate the metallicity distribution of real galaxies, we next introduce three Gaussian bursts in metallicity. For the parameters of each Gaussian, we use the metallicity distribution function of Sarajedini & Van Duyne (2001) for M31. The metal-poor component has $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=1.50\pm 0.45`$, the intermediate-metallicity component has $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=0.82\pm 0.20`$, and the metal-rich component has $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=0.22\pm 0.26`$. The SFR at each metallicity is constant and non-zero over the ranges $`9.4414.96`$, $`5.9610.59`$, and $`2.116.68`$ Gyr for the metal-poor, -intermediate, and -rich components, respectively. Each component is normalized to have equal area but because of our finite metallicity coverage, the metal-rich and metal-poor components are truncated.

In this case (Fig. 20, column 1) the dominant population observed today has $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.8`$ and age $``$ 6 Gyr so $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ is $`1\sigma `$ brighter than the canonical value. But when we introduce a burst at \[Fe/H\] = 0.0 by scaling the SFR up to $`8`$ times larger than the average background rate (Fig. 20, column 2), the edge detector output is ambiguous because it is dominated by several different peaks of nearly equal height. When the same metal-rich burst is scaled to $`15`$ times (Fig. 20, column 3) and $`25`$ times (Fig. 20, column 4) the average background rate, the edge detector is biased toward fainter magnitudes.

## 5 Results

As a quantitative measure of the importance of young stars, we introduce the ratio, $`R`$, of the number of stars in the RGB phase transition stage within $`\pm 1`$ mag of the measured TRGB to the total number of stars in the same magnitude range. In Fig. 21 we plot the measured distance modulus assuming $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})=4.0`$ as a function of R. If the young population is small, then $`(\mathrm{m}\mathrm{M})_\mathrm{I}`$ is correctly recovered at 0.0. When R $``$ 0.50, the young population is half the total population near $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$ and the two competing discontinuities are relatively comparable in size. At this point the edge detector responds to both roughly equally. For R $`>`$ 0.60, the young population dominates the LF and the TRGB method is inaccurate, leading to overestimates of $`(\mathrm{m}\mathrm{M})_\mathrm{I}`$ by $`0.20.5`$ mag.

The quantity, R, is not observable in practice. We would like to use another quantity that provides the same information about the accuracy of the TRGB-distance method but is directly observable. For this purpose, we use the height of the discontinuity at the TRGB, $`c`$. For each model we make separate linear fits to the logarithmic LF in the regions one magnitude fainter and brighter than the measured TRGB. Then $`c`$ is simply the difference between the value of each line at the TRGB. This definition of $`c`$ is similar to that of $`\mathrm{M}\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}\mathrm{ndez}`$ et al. (2002), the only difference being ours involves a fit to the observed LF while theirs involves a fit to the intrinsic LF.

We would expect that as the number of stars undergoing the RGB phase transition increases the TRGB discontinuity of the older population at $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$ eventually disappears in the AGB of the young population. Moreover, the TRGB of the young population is diminished by the RGB of the older population. Hence, for a mix of ages, $`c`$ should decrease as R increases. In other words, the LF in the vicinity of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$ should get smoother as R increases. This is demonstrated in Fig. 22 which shows the LFs of the models from §3.3. The same relationship cannot be true for purely young populations because they contain no stars with discordant values of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ to smooth their LFs.

Such is the case in Fig. 23 where we plot $`c`$ as a function of R. In this plot, the error bars are the random errors of the fit parameters added in quadrature. The purely young models (R $`>`$ 0.9) do not follow any relationship whereas the models with a mix of ages show an inverse relationship like the one we would expect. To check the strength of the correlation we compute Kendall’s Tau rank correlation coefficient, $`\tau `$, for all the models and then for just the models with R $`<`$ 0.9. In the former case, $`\tau =0.18`$ indicating a negative correlation exists at the 91% confidence level. In the latter case, $`\tau =0.52`$, indicating a negative correlation exists at the 99.96% confidence level. By inspection, values of $`c`$ 0.4 correspond to R $``$ 0.55. Hence, values of $`c`$ 0.4 should give errant measurements of $`(\mathrm{m}\mathrm{M})_\mathrm{I}`$.

This expectation is confirmed in Fig. 24 which shows our estimated distance modulus as a function of $`c`$. Models with $`c`$ 0.4 do indeed overestimate $`(\mathrm{m}\mathrm{M})_\mathrm{I}`$ by about $`0.30.5`$ mag corresponding to a fractional distance error of $`1525\%`$. Note that we have lost some information in the transition from R to $`c`$ because values of $`c`$ 0.4 do not guarantee an accurate estimate of the TRGB. However, $`c`$ is the more useful parameter because it is directly available from the LF. Finally, large photometric errors at the magnitude of the TRGB could cause a similar smoothing effect to that discussed above.

As another diagnostic, we define the critical SFR, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, as the SFR of a burst between 1 and 2 Gyr ago which causes the TRGB-distance method to fail. This critical SFR is measured relative to the average background rate and depends on the duration of star formation at older ages. When the background star formation occurs over the lifetime of the Universe, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}2040`$ (Figs. 8, 10, and 11). If the background star formation ended about 7 Gyr ago, then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}=15`$ (Fig. 12) but $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}=5`$ for a background that ended about 10 Gyr ago (Fig. 13). If there were little or no stars created at older ages then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}14`$ (Figs. 6 and 7). When the SFR between 1 and 2 Gyr ago equals $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, the distance modulus could be overestimated by $`0.20.5`$ mag.

In addition to the duration of star formation at old ages, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ also depends on the duration of the burst between 1 and 2 Gyr ago. For example, if the burst was 0.1 Gyr rather than 0.4 Gyr long, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ would be larger. To account for varying strengths and durations of star formation at old and young ages, we define the ratio, $`W`$, of the number of stars formed $`12`$ Gyr ago to the total number of stars formed over the lifetime of the Universe. In contrast to $`R`$, $`W`$ measures the number of stars formed $`12`$ Gyr ago rather than the number of such stars that are observable today in a particular location of the CMD. In Fig. 25, we plot the measured distance modulus versus $`W`$. When $`W>0.30`$ there is a 78% chance of overestimating the distance modulus.

We can understand the effect of metal-rich stars in a similar manner by defining the ratio, $`Q`$, of the number of metal-rich stars (i.e. \[Fe/H\] $`>0.7`$) located within $`\pm 1`$ mag of the measured TRGB to the total number of stars in the same magnitude range. In Fig. 26, we plot the distance modulus assuming $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})=4.0`$ as a function of Q. The method is accurate up to Q $``$ 0.6 at which point significantly errant measurements begin to occur. In fact, 78% of the measurements with Q $`>`$ 0.6 are overestimated by $`>0.2`$ mag.

We can also directly explore how the metallicity of stars affects the TRGB distance method. This is shown in Fig. 27 where $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ is defined as the average metallicity of stars in the range $`0.40.6`$ mag fainter than the estimated $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ for each model. This magnitude range corresponds to $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=3.5\pm 0.1`$ in the absence of any other information about the true distance modulus. Several models from §3 (column 1 of Figs. $`68`$ and $`1013`$) are plotted as open circles to extend the coverage to lower metallicities. The estimated distance modulus is accurate up to $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.3`$. Above this metallicity the distance modulus is overestimated by about $`0.21.0`$ mag.

It is more useful to relate the error in distance modulus to a directly observable quantity. Hence, we plot in Fig. 28 the median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ versus $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ for stars $`0.40.6`$ mag fainter than $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$. Again, the open circles represent several models from §3. As expected, this confirms the well known relation between the color of the TRGB and metallicity. This graph shows that $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]>0.3`$ corresponds to median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ 2.0. So we would expect that the models with median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ 2.0 have values of $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ significantly different from the canonical value.

This expectation is confirmed in Fig. 29 which shows the distance modulus as a function of the median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$. The distance moduli of all models with median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0<1.9`$ were recovered accurately but 67% of the models with median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0>1.9`$ and 86% with median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0>2.0`$ yielded distance moduli too large by about $`0.21.0`$ mag.

Now we define $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ as the SFR of a burst with \[Fe/H\] $`>0.3`$ required to cause the TRGB-distance method to fail. This critical SFR is measured relative to the average background rate at lower metallicities and depends on the range of low metallicities present in the metallicity distribution. When the background star formation occurs for $`1.7[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.3`$, then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}1020`$ (Figs. 17, 18, and 20). If the background star formation occurs over a less extended range of metallicities, like $`0.9[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]0.3`$, then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}=5`$ (Fig. 19). If there were little or no stars created at low metallicities then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}12`$ (Figs. $`1416`$). When the SFR at \[Fe/H\] $`>0.3`$ equals $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, there is aproximately a 78% chance that the distance modulus will be overestimated by $`0.21.0`$ mag. This assumes that the SFR at each metallicity is constant over approximately the same amount of time. If the star formation for \[Fe/H\] $`<0.3`$ occurs over a shorter time span, then $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ would be reduced.

In addition to the range of low metallicities created, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ also depends on the range of high metallicites created. For example, if the burst at high metallicities was 0.1 dex rather than 0.2 dex wide, $`\mathrm{SFR}_{\mathrm{crit}}`$ would be larger. To account for varying strengths and widths of metal-poor and -rich bursts, we define the ratio, $`X`$, of the number of stars created with \[Fe/H\] $`>0.3`$ to the total number of stars created at all metallicities. Unlike $`Q`$, $`X`$ measures the number of metal-rich stars formed rather than the number of such stars observable today in a particular location in the CMD. In Fig. 30, we plot the measured distance modulus versus $`X`$. When $`X>0.70`$ there is a 71% chance of overestimating the distance modulus.

Tables 1 and 2 summarize the results of all simulations. The last column in both tables is the fractional distance error.

## 6 Summary and Conclusions

We have shown that the TRGB-distance method is insensitive to star formation history except for large bursts between ages of about 1 and 2 Gyr. Stars formed at these ages are today undergoing the RGB phase transition during which time the TRGB lies at magnitudes fainter than the canonical value. Stars less than 1 Gyr old reach the TRGB at a significantly bluer location in the $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ CMD than stars greater than 2 Gyr old. These very young stars should not significantly affect the TRGB-distance method because they simply add background noise which could be minimized by excluding them from the analysis as is often already done (Jerjen & Rejkuba 2001; Ma$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{i}}`$z-Apell$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{a}}`$niz et al. 2002; Sakai et al. 2000; Sakai et al. 1999; M$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ndez et al. 2002). The RGB length is so short for $`11.3`$ Gyr that one could detect such a population, if the photometry reveals the RC, by measuring the full length of the RGB between the TRGB and RC. But for the middle and late stages of the RGB phase transition ($`1.31.7`$ Gyr), observational errors might prohibit the use of the RGB length as an indicator.

Instead, the size of the discontinuity, $`c`$, in the LF at the TRGB can be used as a rough indicator of a large burst between $`1.31.7`$ Gyr provided that at least 10% of the population was formed well over 2 Gyr ago. If $`c`$ 0.4 then there may be a significant population undergoing the RGB phase transition which comprises at least $``$ 60% of the total number of stars within one magnitude of the TRGB. These stars would dominate the LF and the assumption that $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})4.0`$ would cause an overestimate of the distance modulus.

Equivalently, if the strength and duration of star formation between the ages of 1.3 and 1.7 Gyr are such that over 30% of the total number of stars created are created in this age range, then there is a 78% chance the distance modulus will be overestimated by $`0.20.5`$ mag. This corresponds to a distance error of $`1025\%`$.

When the number of stars with \[Fe/H\] $`>0.7`$ is at least $``$ 60% of the total number of stars within one magnitude of the TRGB, there is a $`78\%`$ chance they will move $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ significantly fainter than the canonical value. This means that when the average metallicity of stars 0.5 mag fainter than the TRGB is $`>0.3`$, or alternatively, when the median $`(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{I})_0`$ of these stars is greater than 1.9, $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{TRGB})`$ could be about $`0.21.0`$ mag fainter than $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{I}=4.0`$. We caution that the RGBs of the isochrones we have used in this study tend to be about 0.2 mag bluer than empirical RGBs. Therefore, in practice the critical color is probably closer to 2.1.

If the strength and duration of star formation at \[Fe/H\] $`>0.3`$ are such that over 70% of the total number of stars created have \[Fe/H\] $`>0.3`$, then there is aproximately a 71% chance the distance modulus will be overestimated by $`0.21.0`$ mag. This corresponds to a distance error of $`1045\%`$.

Two final notes of caution deserve to be mentioned again. First, the precise age and duration of the RGB phase transition depend on the isochrones used. In particular, models without convective overshoot tend to predict a somewhat earlier age and shorter duration. Second, the sensitivities of the TRGB to variations in SFH which we have examined may change under error, completeness, and crowding conditions significantly different from those we have assumed. This is an issue that deserves further study.

Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine how such strong bursts localized in such a small range of ages or metallicities could actually occur in nature. Indeed, no such bursts have been found in the SFHs of the LG dwarf galaxies (Harris & Zaritsky 2001; Tolstoy et al. 1998; Gallart et al. 1996a; Gallart et al. 1996b; Schulte-Ladbeck et al. 2002; Lynds et al. 1998; Gallart 2000; Carrera et al. 2002; Dolphin 2002). We, therefore, conclude that distance estimates using the TRGB method up to this time have not fallen victim to the effects discussed in this paper. However, as we continue to resolve stellar populations that were previously too far to resolve, it is possible that nature will surprise us yet again.

We thank the referee whose comments greatly improved this paper. We also thank Aaron Grocholski, Glenn Tiede for many fruitful discussions, and Dennis Zaritsky for helpful comments on a draft.