The origin and evolution of the galaxy mass–metallicity relation

By Xiangcheng Ma, P. Hopkins, C. Faucher-Giguére, Nicholas Zolman, A. Muratov, D. Keres̆, Eliot Quataert Caltech, Northwestern, Ucsd, Uc Berkeley. 2015

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We use high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environment (FIRE) project to study the galaxy mass–metallicity relations (MZR) from z=0–6. These simulations include explicit models of the multi-phase ISM, star formation, and stellar feedback. The simulations cover halo masses M_(halo) = 10^9–10^(13) M_☉ and stellar masses M_* = 10^4–10^(11) M_☉ at z = 0 and have been shown to produce many observed galaxy properties from z = 0–6. For the first time, our simulations agree reasonably well with the observed mass–metallicity relations at z = 0–3 for a broad range of galaxy masses. We predict the evolution of the MZR from z = 0–6, as log(Z_(gas)/Z_☉) = 12+log(O/H)-9.0 = 0.35 [log(M_*/M_☉) - 10] + 0.93exp(-0.43z) - 1.05 and log(Z_*/Z_☉) = [Fe=H] + 0.2 = 0.40 [log(M_*/M_☉)-10]+0.67exp(-0.50z)-1.04, for gas-phase and stellar metallicity, respectively. Our simulations suggest that the evolution of MZR is associated with the evolution of stellar/gas mass fractions at different redshifts, indicating the existence of a universal metallicity relation between stellar mass, gas mass, and metallicities. In our simulations, galaxies above M_* = 10^6 M_☉ are able to retain a large fraction of their metals inside the halo, because metal-rich winds fail to escape completely and are recycled into the galaxy. This resolves a long-standing discrepancy between “sub-grid” wind models (and semi-analytic models) and observations, where common sub-grid models cannot simultaneously reproduce the MZR and the stellar mass functions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6cab5a954be812328313b20cb81f7b03e815b6e2

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Citations in the corpus

FIRE-2 simulations: physics versus numerics in galaxy formation (2017, methodology): “More subtle properties, such as the internal SF structure of bursts and hot gas properties of the galaxy, and escape fraction of ionizing photons (Ma et al. 2015, 2016b), require still higher resolution, hence our highest-resolution runs, with mi,1000 = 0.25, satisfying Eq.”
The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, background): “These stellar metallicities have been chosen to encompass the range observed up to z ∼ 4−5 (e.g. Maiolino et al. 2008; Sommariva et al. 2012); they are also in agreement with hydrodynamical simulations (Ma et al. 2016).”
Black holes on FIRE: stellar feedback limits early feeding of galactic nuclei (2017, methodology): “…the scale of starforming regions directly following stellar population synthesis models, the FIRE simulations reproduce a variety of galaxy (Hopkins et al. 2014; Ma et al. 2016; Feldmann et al. 2017) and CGM (Faucher-Giguère et al. 2015, 2016; Muratov et al. 2015; Hafen et al. 2017) observables.”
The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation (2017, background): “In contrast, Lamberts et al. (2016) account for the cosmological evolution through a Press-Schechter like formalism (Cole et al. 2008) with a redshift-dependent massmetallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016).”
The Local Group on FIRE: dwarf galaxy populations across a suite of hydrodynamic simulations (2018, background): “…including the star formation histories of dwarf galaxies (Oñorbe et al. 2015; Wetzel et al. 2016; Fitts et al. 2017); the mass–metallicity (Ma et al. 2016), stellar mass–halo mass (Hopkins et al. 2014, 2018), and stellar mass–star formation rate (Sparre et al. 2017) relationships; and…”
Evidence for two early accretion events that built the Milky Way stellar halo (2019, methodology): “…of −1.6 gives a broadly consistent stellar 1 For the mass fraction Mcurrent/Minitial for FSR 1758, we used the mean mass fraction of the other member GCs. mass of 2 × 107M , but if we take account of the redshift evolution of the relation, this could be larger (see e.g., Ma et al. 2016).”
Not so lumpy after all: modelling the depletion of dark matter subhaloes by Milky Way-like galaxies (2017, background): “-metallicity relations (Ma et al. 2016b), the M?”
The bolometric quasar luminosity function at z = 0–7 (2020, methodology): “Given the observational updates, we choose to adopt a redshift-dependent dust-to-gas ratio which scales as the gas-phase metallicity given by the fit in Ma et al. (2016).”
The structure and dynamical evolution of the stellar disc of a simulated Milky Way-mass galaxy (2016, methodology): “…fractions around galaxies at both low and high redshift (Faucher-Giguère et al. 2015, 2016; Hafen et al. 2016), the stellar mass–metallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016), mass-loading factors of galactic winds (Muratov et al. 2015), metal budgets and CGM metal content (Muratov et al. 2016), galaxy…”
FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, background): “…dwarf galaxies have reproduced several key observables, including realistic galactic outflows (Muratov et al. 2015), the mass-metallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016), the mass-size relation and age/metallicity gradients (El-Badry et al. 2016), cored dark-matter profiles (Oñorbe et al. 2015; Chan et…”
RECONCILING DWARF GALAXIES WITH ΛCDM COSMOLOGY: SIMULATING A REALISTIC POPULATION OF SATELLITES AROUND A MILKY WAY–MASS GALAXY (2016, background): “…of isolated dwarf galaxies have reproduced several key observables: realistic galactic outflows (Muratov et al. 2015), Mstarmetallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016), Mstar-size relation (El-Badry et al. 2016), cored dark-matter profiles (Oñorbe et al. 2015; Chan et al. 2015), and…”
The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, background): “…including the galaxy stellar mass function (Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011a; Vogelsberger et al. 2014), the mass–metallicity relation (Davé et al. 2011b; Torrey et al. 2014; Ma et al. 2016b), and the metal enrichment of the IGM (Oppenheimer & Davé 2006, 2008; Ford et al. 2013, 2014).”
The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers (2019, methodology): “11, we show that it is possible to reproduce such a limit within the evolutionary model of this paper, which does not include pulsation PISNes, by choosing a suitable MSSFR alone (Langer & Norman 2006; Madau & Dickinson 2014; Ma et al. 2016).”