The role of cold gas and environment on the stellar mass-metallicity relation of nearby galaxies
By T. Hughes, L. Cortese, A. Boselli, G. Gavazzi, J. Davies. 2012
145 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We investigate the relationship between stellar mass, metallicity and gas content for a magnitude- and volume-limited sample of 260 nearby late-type galaxies in different environments, from isolated galaxies to Virgo cluster members. We derive oxygen abundance estimates using new integrated, drift-scan optical spectroscopy and the base metallicity calibrations of Kewley & Ellison (2008, ApJ, 681, 1183). Combining these measurements with ultraviolet to near-infrared photometry and Hi 21 cm line observations, we examine the relations between stellar mass, metallicity, gas mass fraction and star formation rate. We find that, at fixed stellar mass, galaxies with lower gas fractions typically also possess higher oxygen abundances. We also observe a relationship between gas fraction and metal content, whereby gas-poor galaxies are typically more metal-rich, and demonstrate that the removal of gas from the outskirts of spirals may increase the observed average metallicity by ∼0.1 dex. Although some cluster galaxies are gas-deficient objects, statistically the stellar-mass metallicity relation is nearly invariant to the environment, in agreement with recent studies. These results indicate that internal evolutionary processes, rather than environmental effects, play a key role in shaping the stellar mass-metallicity relation. In addition, we present metallicity estimates based on observations of 478 nearby galaxies.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/284d2f0601612c29910d458aa61ef745d4415e01
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Astronomy and Astrophysics
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- F. Mannucci
- R. Maiolino
- Bruce G. Elmegreen
- G. Cresci
- D. Elmegreen
- C. Lagos
- Robert C. Kennicutt Jr.
- A. Boselli
In Instrumentation
- R. Maiolino
- F. Mannucci
- G. Cresci
- Bruce G. Elmegreen
- D. Elmegreen
- L. Cortese
- A. Marconi
- B. Catinella
Citations in the corpus
- Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, methodology): “The mean uncertainty relative to the adopted method on the 12+log(O/H) index is 0.13 dex (Hughes et al. 2013).”
- A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, background): “Recently, Hughes et al. (2013) systematically analysed the influence of H I gas fractions on the mass–metallicity relation for a sample of 260 local galaxies, finding that the gas fraction is closely related to the scatter in the mass–metallicity relation.”
- Star formation sustained by gas accretion (2014, background): “Hughes et al. (2013) also find the anti-correlation between metallicity and gas mass at fixed stellar mass in a volumelimited sample of 260 nearby late-type galaxies.”
- Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, methodology): “(5) Hughes et al. (2013) measured the metallicity of the galaxies of our sample with integrated spectroscopy, where different calibrations are used to derive 12 + log(O/H), depending on the availability of the main emission lines.”