THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION

By Jabran Zahid, Gabriel Ionel Dima, R. Kudritzki, Lisa J. Kewley, Margaret J. Geller, H. Hwang, J. Silverman, D. Kashino. 2014

186 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the mass–metallicity relation for z ≲ 1.6. The mass–metallicity relation follows a steep slope with a turnover, or “knee,” at stellar masses around 1010 M☉. At stellar masses higher than the characteristic turnover mass, the mass–metallicity relation flattens as metallicities begin to saturate. We show that the redshift evolution of the mass–metallicity relation depends only on the evolution of the characteristic turnover mass. The relationship between metallicity and the stellar mass normalized to the characteristic turnover mass is independent of redshift. We find that the redshift-independent slope of the mass–metallicity relation is set by the slope of the relationship between gas mass and stellar mass. The turnover in the mass–metallicity relation occurs when the gas-phase oxygen abundance is high enough that the amount of oxygen locked up in low-mass stars is an appreciable fraction of the amount of oxygen produced by massive stars. The characteristic turnover mass is the stellar mass, where the stellar-to-gas mass ratio is unity. Numerical modeling suggests that the relationship between metallicity and the stellar-to-gas mass ratio is a redshift-independent, universal relationship followed by all galaxies as they evolve. The mass–metallicity relation originates from this more fundamental universal relationship between metallicity and the stellar-to-gas mass ratio. We test the validity of this universal metallicity relation in local galaxies where stellar mass, metallicity, and gas mass measurements are available. The data are consistent with a universal metallicity relation. We derive an equation for estimating the hydrogen gas mass from measurements of stellar mass and metallicity valid for z ≲ 1.6 and predict the cosmological evolution of galactic gas masses.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/70a1440add1dd7683383fd543ecfac464f7851c5

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

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. Volker Springel
5. R. Somerville
6. T. Naab
7. A. Dekel
8. C. Faucher-Giguére

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. C. Steidel
2. Naveen A. Reddy
3. M. Pettini
4. A. Shapley
5. D. Erb
6. R. Somerville
7. P. Hopkins
8. Simon D. M. White

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. T. Naab
5. R. Somerville
6. Volker Springel
7. A. Dekel
8. P. V. van Dokkum

Citations in the corpus

• Consistent modelling of the meta-galactic UV background and the thermal/ionization history of the intergalactic medium (2018, methodology): “…represents the best fit to the data of the mass-weighted metallicity of newly formed stars, obtained by integrating the mass-metallicity relation of Zahid et al. (2014) over the evolving galaxy stellar mass function of Baldry et al. (2012), Ilbert et al. (2013), Kajisawa et al. (2009), Lee et al.…”
• A TURNOVER IN THE GALAXY MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR FORMATION AT M* ∼ 1010 M☉ FOR REDSHIFTS z < 1.3 (2015, background): “Zahid et al. (2014) study the mass metallicity relationship and infer a much shallower evolution of gas mass Mg ∝ (1 + z)1.35.”
• The mass–metallicity and the fundamental metallicity relation revisited on a fully Te-based abundance scale for galaxies (2019, methodology): “The observed trend in the slope is robust against the choice of different metallicity diagnostics, and is clearly present also adopting the modified version of the Zahid et al. (2014b) parametrisation of the MZR.”
• STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, background): “…a characteristic stellar mass; consequently, the fitting functions used to represent them include such a characteristic mass as an additional parameter (e.g., Maiolino et al. 2008; Moustakas et al. 2011; Andrews & Martini 2013; Zahid et al. 2014), somewhat akin to “L∗” in a luminosity function.”
• Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, background): “Unfortunately, measuring the mass loading factor accurately from observations remains difficult and a consensus on its valueshas not been reached yet (Zahid et al. 2014a).”
• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, background): “Now that metal depletion is properly accounted for, we can assess how well our model reproduces the observed relationship between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity (Maiolino et al. 2008; Mannucci et al. 2009; Andrews & Martini 2013; Zahid et al. 2014).”
• Molecular hydrogen abundances of galaxies in the EAGLE simulations (2015, methodology): “In practice, we compare the neutral gas mass-weighted metallicity of individual EAGLE galaxies with the observed median gas metallicity of Zahid et al. (2014) at the same stellar mass and estimate how much higher the predicted metallicity is compared to the median in the observations.”
• Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, methodology): “We have assumed that the Zahid et al. (2014) MZR holds at all redshifts, and integrated this relation over the evolving galaxy stellar mass function at 0 < z < 7 to compute a mean stellar mass-weighted gas-phase metallicity (see Madau & Fragos 2017 for details and references) as: log(Z/Z ) = 0.153…”
• THE MOSDEF SURVEY: MASS, METALLICITY, AND STAR-FORMATION RATE AT z ∼ 2.3 (2014, background): “Other explanations attribute the MZR to variations in the star formation efficiency (Tassis et al. 2008) or the gas mass fraction (Zahid et al. 2014) without referencing gas flows, although these processes are undoubtedly linked.”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, background): “…AO galaxies to mitigate evolutionary effects (e.g. Erb et al. 2006a; Jones et al. 2010a, 2013; E. Wuyts et al. 2014a, 2016; Troncoso et al. 2014; Zahid et al. 2014; Sanders et al. 2015; Leethochawalit et al. 2016), and to results obtained from the same N2 indicator as used here for consistency.”
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, methodology): “The median mass-metallicity relations predicted by the intermediate-resolution simulations agree with Zahid et al. (2014) to better than 0.2 dex at all masses and to better than 0.1 dex for M∗ > 10 9.5 M , but the observed relation is steeper at lower masses.”
• New calibrations for abundance determinations in H ii regions (2016, background): “…dependence on environment or star formation rate (e.g., Lequeux et al. 1979; Grebel et al. 2003; Tremonti et al. 2004; Erb et al. 2006; Panter et al. 2008; Zahid et al. 2012; Sánchez et al. 2013; Peng & Maiolino 2014; Zahid et al. 2014; Izotov et al. 2015, to just name a few of the many studies).”
• The spin of the second-born black hole in coalescing binary black holes (2018, background): “However, low-metallicity star-formation environments are more common at high redshift (e.g., Zahid et al. 2014).”
• Radiation Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn: X-Rays from Compact Binaries (2016, methodology): “…parameters in Equation (4) that fit the observed redshift-dependent MZ relation are Z0 = 9.102± 0.002, γ = 0.513± 0.009, and log M0 = (9.138± 0.003)+ (2.64± 0.05) log(1+ z), (5) whereM0 is expressed in solar masses and stellar masses are measured assuming a Chabrier (2003) IMF (Zahid et al. 2014).”
• Bimodality of low-redshift circumgalactic O VI in non-equilibrium EAGLE zoom simulations (2016, background): “The ISM oxygen content increases at lower mass, owing to higher gas fractions; the stellar mass-ISM metallicity relationship (i.e. the MZR) in the EAGLE-Recal prescription reproduces the observed decline with mass (Tremonti et al. 2004; Zahid et al. 2014).”
• The origin and evolution of the galaxy mass–metallicity relation (2015, background): “…and some analytic models suggest a fundamental metallicity relation (FMR) between stellar mass, star formation rate, and metallicity that holds for starforming galaxies both in the local universe and at high redshifts (e.g. Mannucci et al. 2010, 2011; Lilly et al. 2013; Zahid et al. 2014).”
• Colours and luminosities of z = 0.1 galaxies in the eagle simulation (2015, methodology): “We take the analytic expression for the M –Zg mass–metallicity relation at z = 0.1 of Zahid et al. (2014), ZZ14(M ), evaluated at the Milky Way stellar mass, MMW = 6.43 × 1010 M (McMillan 2011), as the ISM metallicity represented by the optical depth values of equation (2).”