Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals
By I. Ho, R. Kudritzki, Lisa J. Kewley, H. Zahid, M. Dopita, F. Bresolin, D. Rupke. 2015
161 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We present metallicity gradients in 49 local field star-form ing galaxies. We derive gas- phase oxygen abundances using two widely adopted metallicity calibrations based on the (O III)/H�, (N II)/Hand (N II)/(O II) line ratios. The two derived metallicity gradients are usually in good agreement within ±0.14 dex R −1 25 (R25 is the B-band iso-photoal radius), but the metallicity gradients can differ significantly when the ionisation parameters change systematically with radius. We investigate the metallicit y gradients as a function of stellar mass (8 MB > −22). When the metallicity gradients are expressed in dex kpc −1 , we show that galaxies with lower mass and luminosity, on average, have steeper metallicity gradients. When the metallicity gradients are expressed in dex R −1 25 , we find no correlation between the metallicity gradients, and stellar mass and luminosity. We provide a local benchmark metallicity gradient of field star-forming galaxies useful for comparison with studies at high redshifts. We investigate the origin of the local benchmark gradient using simple chemical evolution models and observed gas and stellar surface density profiles in nearby field spira l galaxies. Our models suggest that the local benchmark gradient is a direct result of the co evolution of gas and stellar disk under virtually closed-box chemical evolution when the stellar-to-gas mass ratio becomes high (≫ 0.3). These models imply low current mass accretion rates (. 0.3 × SFR), and low mass outflow rates ( . 3 × SFR) in local field star-forming galaxies.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e5e4f1f69ec789334a963bb7a068c31580c5a7b
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- The structure and dynamical evolution of the stellar disc of a simulated Milky Way-mass galaxy (2016, background): “A negative radial metallicity gradient is expected from the coevolution between the gas disk and stellar disk (e.g. Ho et al. 2015).”
- SDSS-IV MaNGA : the impact of diffuse ionized gas on emission-line ratios, interpretation of diagnostic diagrams and gas metallicity measurements (2016, methodology): “This will influence metallicity gradient measurements (Sánchez et al. 2014; Ho et al. 2015), metallicities at the outskirts of galaxies (Moran et al. 2010), the mass-metallicity relation in the local universe (e.g. McClure & van den Bergh, 1968; Lequeux et al. 1979; Garnett 2002; Tremonti et al.…”
- SDSS IV MaNGA – metallicity and nitrogen abundance gradients in local galaxies (2017, background): “Recent IFS observations of nearby galaxies (Rosales-Ortega et al. 2011; Sánchez et al. 2012b, 2014; Ho et al. 2015; SánchezMenguiano et al. 2016; Pérez-Montero et al. 2016) have provided large datasets suitable for studying the shape of the metallicity gradients in the nearby Universe.”