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Description
Currently, the global characteristics and evolution of super star clusters (SSCs) are not well understood, due to the large distances to their host galaxies. We aim to study the population of SSCs in IRAS 17138-1017, a luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG), in terms of age, extinction, mass, and luminosity distribution. We analyzed imaging data in the near-infrared from the GeMS/GSAOI instrument on the Gemini telescope and generated simulations with the radiative transfer code MontAGN. The extraction of SSCs from the images and their photometry in J, H, and Ks allowed us to derive color-color and color-magnitude diagrams. Comparison with a theoretical stellar evolutionary track gives a first hint into the extinction towards each SSC, as well as their ages, despite some degeneracy between those two quantities. Spectra given by our radiative transfer code MontAGN, which includes dust emission, also provide insightful predictions and comparisons. We detect with a fair degree of confidence 54 SSCs of m_Ks between 16 mag and 21 mag with a median instrumental uncertainty of 0.05 mag. When plotted on a color-color diagram and a color-magnitude diagram, it appears that most of the sources are very much extinct with respect to an intrinsic theoretical evolutionary track. Once de-reddened, the colors point unambiguously to two distinct and very recent starburst episodes at 2.8 and 4.5Myr. While the SSCs in the 4.5Myr starburst are distributed along the spiral arms, the 2.8Myr SSCs are concentrated in the central region. The luminosity and mass functions present a classical power-law behavior, although with shallower slopes than generally observed in LIRGs. Comparison with radiative transfer simulations shows that, especially for the youngest SSCs, the thermal emission by dust is not negligible and could explain the few very red SSCs that could not be de-reddened safely. This effect could lead to a misevaluation of the age of the starburst by at most 1 or 2Myr.
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