Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Stellar Population Synthesis Models

Understand

Accounting for nebular emission when modeling galaxy spectral energy distributions (SEDs) is important, as both line and continuum emission can contribute significantly to the total observed flux.

• In this work, we present a new nebular emission model integrated within the Flexible Stellar Population Synthesis code that computes the total line and continuum emission for complex stellar populations using the photoionization code Cloudy.
• The self-consistent coupling of the nebular emission to the matched ionizing spectrum produces emission line intensities that correctly scale with the stellar population as a function of age and metallicity.
• This more complete model of galaxy SEDs will improve estimates of global gas properties derived with diagnostic diagrams, star formation rates based on H$\alpha$, and stellar masses derived from NIR broadband photometry.