The Origin and Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relationship for Galaxies: Results from Cosmological N-Body Simulations

By A. Brooks, Fabio Governato, C. Booth, B. Willman, J. Gardner, James Wadsley, G. Stinson, Thomas Quinn. 2006

209 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the origin and evolution of the mass-metallicity relationship (MZR, M*-Z) for galaxies using high-resolution cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) + N-body simulations that include a physically motivated description of supernova feedback and subsequent metal enrichment. We discriminate between two sources that may contribute to the origin of the MZR: (1) metal and baryon loss due to gas outflow or (2) inefficient star formation at the lowest galaxy masses. Our simulated galaxies reproduce the observed MZR in shape and normalization at both z = 0 and 2. We find that baryon loss occurs due to UV heating before star formation turns on in galaxies with Mbar < 108 M☉, but that some gas loss due to supernova-induced winds is required to subsequently reproduce the low effective chemical yield observed in low-mass galaxies. Despite this, we show that low star formation efficiencies, regulated by supernova feedback, are primarily responsible for the lower metallicities of low-mass galaxies and the overall M*-Z trend. We find that the shape of the MZR is relatively constant with redshift but that its normalization increases with time. Simulations with no energy feedback from supernovae overproduce metals at low galaxy masses by rapidly transforming a large fraction of their gas into stars. Despite the fact that our low-mass galaxies have lost a majority of their baryons, they are still the most gas-rich objects in our simulations due to their low star formation efficiencies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b44606bbbe03fa447799f07dd55c33110452d71

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Citations in the corpus

LSD: Lyman-break galaxies Stellar populations and Dynamics – I. Mass, metallicity and gas at z∼ 3.1 (2009, methodology): “The existence of this selection effect makes it impossible to test at z = 3 the results of several models of galaxy formation, such as Brooks et al. (2007) and Mouchine et al. (2008).”
Forming a large disc galaxy from a z < 1 major merger (2008, methodology): “Without further adjustments, this scheme has been proven to reproduce the relation between metallicity and stellar mass (Brooks et al. 2007; Maiolino et al. 2008) and the abundance of damped Lyman α systems at z = 3 (Pontzen et al. 2008).”
Clues to the Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Dependence on Star Formation Rate and Galaxy Size (2007, background): “However, the effects of supernova feedback on star formation efficiency and metal-poor gas infall have also been cited as important factors (Brooks et al. 2007; Finalator & Davé 2007).”
Constraints on star formation driven galaxy winds from the mass–metallicity relation at z= 0 (2010, methodology): “Several previous analyses ofthe mass-metallicity relation have suggested that a varying star formation efficiency with galaxy mass is required in order to reproduce the mass-metallicity relation (e.g., Brooks et al. 2007; Calura et al. 2009).”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, background): “The MZ relation could possibly be the result of metal-rich outflows (Larson 1974), inefficient star formation in less massive galaxies (Brooks et al. 2007; Finlator & Davé 2008; Calura et al. 2009), metal-poor inflows (Dalcanton et al. 2004), variations in the initial mass function (IMF; Köppen…”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “…of gas fraction with galaxy mass in the models arises from two physical effects that make the global SFE lower in low-mass galaxies: stronger stellar feedback (Brooks et al. 2007), Models of Galaxy Formation 41 and less efficient formation of H2 (Christensen et al. 2012, Popping et al. 2014b).”
GALAXY PAIRS IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY. I. STAR FORMATION, ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS FRACTION, AND THE LUMINOSITY/MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2008, background): “Simulations of chemical evolution offer a variety of alternatives, including variable initial mass functions (Koppen et al. 2007), star-formation efficiency (Brooks et al. 2007), and the interplay between metal-poor gas inflow and massloaded winds (Finlator & Davé 2008).”
Implementing molecular hydrogen in hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation (2012, methodology): “…2010), theint rnal structure of disk galaxies (Governato et al. 2007; Roškar et al. 2008; Stinson et al. 2009; Brooks et al. 2009), the column density distributions of damped Lyman-α systems (Pontzen et al. 2008, 2010), and the observed stellar mass-metallicity relationship (Brooks et al. 2007).”
A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, background): “A host of physical models has been proposed to explain the mass–metallicity relation, including star formation efficiency issues (Brooks et al. 2007) and initial mass function (IMF) variations (Köppen, Weidner & Kroupa 2007).”
The galaxy stellar mass-star formation rate relation: evidence for an evolving stellar initial mass function? (2007, result): “…relation (Erb et al. 2006a) has the potential to test the IMF; if the evolving IMF is correct, the good agreement found versus recent models (Brooks et al. 2007; Finlator & Davé 2007; Kobayashi, Springel & White 2007) would perhaps not stand, and, in particular, many more metals would…”
Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, background): “…et al. 2004), accretion of metal-free gas (e.g.Dalcanton et al. 2004), and variation in the initial mass function (Köppen et al. 2007) or star formation efficiency (e.g.,Brooks et al. 2007; Calura et al. 2009) have all been proposed to be responsible for shaping the mass-metallicity relation.”
THE MASS–METALLICITY AND LUMINOSITY–METALLICITY RELATIONS FROM DEEP2 AT z ∼ 0.8 (2010, background): “Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (Brooks et al. 2007; Oppenheimer & Davé 2008) have predicted an evolution in the MZ relation and recent observations at intermediate redshifts (z ∼ 0.7) have provided strong evidence for an evolution.”
Cuspy No More: How Outflows Affect the Central Dark Matter and Baryon Distribution in Lambda CDM Galaxies (2012, methodology): “…applications have been described in several papers and shown to reproduce many galaxy properties over a range of redshifts: Stinson et al. (2006); Brooks et al. (2007); Governato et al. (2007); Pontzen et al. (2008); Governato et al. (2009); Zolotov et al. (2009); Pontzen et al. (2010); Brook et…”
GAS-PHASE OXYGEN GRADIENTS IN STRONGLY INTERACTING GALAXIES. I. EARLY-STAGE INTERACTIONS (2010, background): “Intense study of the mass-metallicity (hereafter, M − Z) relation in recent years has yet to pin down its origin (e.g., Tremonti et al. 2004; Köppen et al. 2007; Brooks et al. 2007; Dalcanton 2007; Zahid et al. 2010).”
THE ROLE OF COLD FLOWS IN THE ASSEMBLY OF GALAXY DISKS (2008, background): “…accretion and star formation includes both the cooling time of the gas particle onto the disk, the natural time the gas might spend in the disk before producing stars, and subsequent delays in SF due to feedback processes in the disk, which vary as a function of galaxy mass (Brooks et al. 2007).”
MODELING THE METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION OF GLOBULAR CLUSTERS (2010, background): “…of Lyman-break galaxies at z ≈ 2 (Erb et al. 2006), Gemini Deep Survey galaxies at z ≈ 1 (Savaglio et al. 2005), and cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that provide the average metallicity of galaxies (Brooks et al. 2007; Davé et al. 2007): [Fe/H](t) ≈ [Fe/H]0 − 0.03 ( t0 − t 109 yr ) .”
MODELING MOLECULAR HYDROGEN AND STAR FORMATION IN COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS (2008, unknown): “The standard approach in galaxy formation modeling so far (c.f. recent studies by Brooks et al. 2007; Governato et al. 2007; Ceverino & Klypin 2007; Scannapieco et al. 2008; Croft et al. 2008; Oppenheimer & Davé 2008; Tasker & Bryan 2008; Mayer et al. 2008, and many earlier works, comprehensively…”