Estimating ages and metallicities of M31 star clusters from LAMOST DR6
  Context. Determining the metallicities and ages of M31 clusters is
fundamental to the study of the formation and evolution of M31 itself. The
Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) has carried
out a systematic spectroscopic campaign of clusters and candidates in M31.
Aims. We constructed a catalogue of 346 M31 clusters observed by LAMOST. By
combining the information of the LAMOST spectra and the multi-band photometry,
we developed a new algorithm to estimate the metallicities and ages of these
clusters. Methods. We distinguish young clusters from old using random forest
classifiers based on a empirical training data set selected from the
literature. Ages of young clusters are derived from the spectral energy
distribution (SED) fits of their multi-band photometric measurements. Their
metallicities are estimated by fitting their observed spectral principal
components extracted from the LAMOST spectra with those from the young
metal-rich single stellar population (SSP) models. For old clusters, we built
non-parameter random forest models between the spectral principal components
and/or multi-band colours and the parameters of the clusters based on a
training data set constructed from the SSP models. The ages and metallicities
of the old clusters are then estimated by fitting their observed spectral
principal components extracted from the LAMOST spectra and multi-band colours
from the photometric measurements with the resultant random forest models.
Results. We derived parameters of 53 young and 293 old clusters in our
catalogue. Our resultant parameters are in good agreement with those from the
literature. The ages of about 30 catalogued clusters and metallicities of about
40 sources are derived for the first time.
