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Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBFs) are one of the most powerfultechniques to measure the distance and to constrain the unresolved stellarcontent of extragalactic systems. For a given bandpass, the absolute SBFmagnitude \bar{M} depends on the properties of the underlying stellarpopulation. Multi-band SBFs allow scientists to probe different stages of thestellar evolution: UV and blue wavelength band SBFs are sensitive to theevolution of stars within the hot Horizontal Branch (HB) and post-AsymptoticGiant Branch (post-AGB) phase, whereas optical SBF magnitudes explore the starswithin the Red Giant Branch (RGB) and HB regime. Near- and Far-infrared SBFluminosities probe the important stellar evolution stage within the AGB andThermally-Pulsating Asymptotic Giant Branch (TP-AGB) phase. Since the firstsuccessful application by Tonry and Schneider, a multiplicity of works haveused this method to expand the distance scale up to 150 Mpc and beyond. Thisarticle gives a historical background of distance measurements, reviews thebasic concepts of the SBF technique, presents a broad sample of theseinvestigations and discusses possible selection effects, biases, andlimitations of the method. In particular, exciting new developments andimprovements in the field of stellar population synthesis are discussed thatare essential to understand the physics and properties of the populations inunresolved stellar systems. Further, promising future directions of the SBFtechnique are presented. With new upcoming space-based satellites such as Gaia,the SBF method will remain as one of the most important tools to derivedistances to galaxies with unprecedented accuracy and to give detailed insightsinto the stellar content of globular clusters and galaxies.

Distance Measurements and Stellar Population Properties via Surface Brightness Fluctuations