Integrated spectroscopy of bulge globular clusters and fields^*

I. The data base and comparison of individual Lick indices in clusters and bulge

¹ Sternwarte der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Scheinerstrasse 43, 81679 München, Germany e-mail: saglia, greggio@usm.uni-muenchen.de
² European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany e-mail: mkissler, arenzini@eso.org
³ Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstrasse, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany e-mail: maraston@mpe.mpg.de
⁴ Università di Padova, Dept. di Astronomia, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padova, Italy e-mail: ortolani@pd.astro.it

Corresponding author: T. H. Puzia, puzia@usm.uni-muenchen.de

Received: 7 June 2002
Accepted: 23 August 2002

Abstract

We present a comprehensive spectroscopic study of the integrated light of metal-rich Galactic globular clusters and the stellar population in the Galactic bulge. We measure line indices which are defined by the Lick standard system and compare index strengths of the clusters and Galactic bulge. Both metal-rich globular clusters and the bulge are similar in most of the indices, except for the CN index. We find a significant enhancement in the CNFe index ratio in metal-rich globular clusters compared with the Galactic bulge. The mean iron index Fe of the two metal-rich globular clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 is comparable with the mean iron index of the bulge. Index ratios such as MgbFe, MgFe, Ca 4227Fe, and TiOFe, are comparable in both stellar population indicating similar enhancements in individual elements which are traced by the indices. From the globular cluster data we fully empirically calibrate several metallicity-sensitive indices as a function of [Fe/H] and find tightest correlations for the Mg₂ index and the composite [MgFe] index. We find that all indices show a similar behavior with galactocentric radius, except for the Balmer series, which show a large scatter at all radii. However, the scatter is entirely consistent with the cluster-to-cluster variations in the horizontal branch morphology.