THE UNIVERSAL STELLAR MASS–STELLAR METALLICITY RELATION FOR DWARF GALAXIES

By E. Kirby, J. Cohen, P. Guhathakurta, L. Cheng, James S. Bullock, A. Gallazzi. 2013

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We present spectroscopic metallicities of individual stars in seven gas-rich dwarf irregular galaxies (dIrrs), and we show that dIrrs obey the same mass–metallicity relation as the dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellites of both the Milky Way and M31: . The uniformity of the relation is in contradiction to previous estimates of metallicity based on photometry. This relationship is roughly continuous with the stellar mass–stellar metallicity relation for galaxies as massive as M* = 1012 M☉. Although the average metallicities of dwarf galaxies depend only on stellar mass, the shapes of their metallicity distributions depend on galaxy type. The metallicity distributions of dIrrs resemble simple, leaky box chemical evolution models, whereas dSphs require an additional parameter, such as gas accretion, to explain the shapes of their metallicity distributions. Furthermore, the metallicity distributions of the more luminous dSphs have sharp, metal-rich cut-offs that are consistent with the sudden truncation of star formation due to ram pressure stripping.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86377e7e58e7ce26cb3936cbeb38972985f86403

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Star formation in semi-analytic galaxy formation models with multiphase gas (2015, background): “The stellar c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 metallicities derived by Gallazzi et al. (2005) are sensitive to a combination of Fe and Mg, and the stellar MZR derived by Kirby et al. (2013) measures [Fe/H].”
FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, methodology): “For comparison, we also show data for low-mass galaxies in and around the Local Group from Kirby et al. (2013, 2014) as gray circles (for satellites) and black squares (for non-satellites).”
Dwarf galaxies in CDM and SIDM with baryons: observational probes of the nature of dark matter (2014, result): “The second panel in the top row shows the V-band luminosity–metallicity relation, where a comparison with the compilation of data for dSphs and dIrrs presented in Kirby et al. (2013) is also shown.”
A MegaCam Survey of Outer Halo Satellites. III. Photometric and Structural Parameters (2018, background): “This may indicate that Segue 2 was once a more luminous object, perhaps similar to Ursa Minor, that underwent significant tidal stripping (Kirby et al. 2013a).”
Co-formation of the disc and the stellar halo (2018, background): “The radically radial component of the nearby stellar halo is also the one that contains the most metal-rich halo stars, in agreement with the mass-metallicity relationship observed in dwarf galaxies (Kirby et al. 2013).”
RECONCILING DWARF GALAXIES WITH ΛCDM COSMOLOGY: SIMULATING A REALISTIC POPULATION OF SATELLITES AROUND A MILKY WAY–MASS GALAXY (2016, neutral): “Stars show observations in Kirby et al. (2013).”
The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs : a critical test of ΛCDM at the edge of galaxy formation (2016, background): “At least some of the ‘ultra-faint’ dwarfs that have already been found orbiting the Milky Way and Andromeda are likely even less massive than Leo T (e.g. Kirby et al. 2013a), holding the promise of providing unparalleled constraints on mWDM and/or other cosmologies that suppress small scale power.”
Galaxies as simple dynamical systems: observational data disfavor dark matter and stochastic star formation (2014, background): “The lower panel shows the stellar [Fe/H] abundances predicted by the same models in comparison with observations of MW and M31 satellites summarized in [194].”
THE QUENCHING OF THE ULTRA-FAINT DWARF GALAXIES IN THE REIONIZATION ERA (2014, result): “…2008; Martin et al. 2008a; Greco et al. 2008; Muñoz et al. 2010; Weisz et al. 2014b), while spectroscopy of their giant stars indicates low metallicities, but with a dispersion significantly larger than the measurement errors (Frebel et al. 2010; Norris et al. 2010; Kirby et al. 2008, 2011, 2013).”
The hidden giant: discovery of an enormous Galactic dwarf satellite in Gaia DR2 (2018, neutral): “…objects with metallicities drawn solely based on the colour of the RGB (Da Costa & Armandroff 1990), as these are more affected by systematics due to the age/metallicity degeneracy compared to other photometric methods (see e.g. McConnachie et al. 2008; Kirby et al. 2013, for further discussion).”
The SPHINX Cosmological Simulations of the First Billion Years: the Impact of Binary Stars on Reionization★ (2018, background): “Such a scenario, however, presents some tension with observations, as dwarf galaxies in the local Universe are not observed to become substantially enriched, with M∗ < 108 M galaxies having <1/10th solar metallicity (Kirby et al. 2013).”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, background): “A correlation between stellar mass and metallicity is observed not only in gas but also stars (Gallazzi et al. 2005; Kudritzki et al. 2012; Kirby et al. 2013; Conroy et al. 2013; Hosek et al. 2014).”
Forged in FIRE: cusps, cores and baryons in low-mass dwarf galaxies (2015, background): “The observed stellar size-mass relation seen for Milky Way satellites (green) and Local Group field dwarfs (yellow) are shown as data points (taken from Wolf et al. 2010; Kirby et al. 2013, 2014, who also compile data from the literature).”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, background): “For M∗>∼ 10 9 M simulation Recal-L025N0752 is relatively close to the data, but at lower masses all models predict higher metallicities than observed by Kirby et al. (2013).”