GAS-PHASE OXYGEN GRADIENTS IN STRONGLY INTERACTING GALAXIES. I. EARLY-STAGE INTERACTIONS

By D. Rupke, Lisa J. Kewley, Li-Hsin Chien. 2010

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A consensus is emerging that interacting galaxies show depressed nuclear gas metallicities compared to isolated star-forming galaxies. Simulations suggest that this nuclear underabundance is caused by interaction-induced inflow of metal-poor gas and that this inflow concurrently flattens the radial metallicity gradients in strongly interacting galaxies. We present metallicities of over 300 H ii regions in a sample of 16 spirals that are members of strongly interacting galaxy pairs with mass ratio near unity. The deprojected radial gradients in these galaxies are about half of those in a control sample of isolated, late-type spirals. Detailed comparison of the gradients with simulations shows remarkable agreement in gradient distributions, the relationship between gradients and nuclear underabundances, and the shape of profile deviations from a straight line. Taken together, this evidence conclusively demonstrates that strongly interacting galaxies at the present day undergo nuclear metal dilution due to gas inflow, as well as significant flattening of their gas-phase metallicity gradients, and that current simulations can robustly reproduce this behavior at a statistical level.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a12448d2567e8ab8794820bc7592b1a614b0744a

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Citations in the corpus

• Metallicity gradients in disks - Do galaxies form inside-out? (2012, methodology): “Our work aims to fill an important gap in the field, by complementing orbital parameter studies (e.g. Rupke et al. 2010a; Perez et al. 2011), systematic sub-grid physics parameter studies (e.g. Wiersma et al. 2011), and detailed dissections of individual systems (e.g. Rahimi et al. 2011; Zolotov et…”
• Escape of Lyman continuum radiation from local galaxies - Detection of leakage from the young starburst Tol 1247-232 (2013, background): “However, unlike dust, it has been shown for local interacting galaxies that the metallicity is quite stable over the whole galaxy (e.g. Bergvall & Östlin 2002; Rupke et al. 2010).”
• Chemical signatures of formation processes in the stellar populations of simulated galaxies (2011, background): “Galaxy mergers induce major starbursts which substantially modify the abundance patterns in the ISM (e.g. Perez et al. 2006; Di Matteo et al. 2009; Rupke et al. 2010, Perez et al. submitted).”
• Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, methodology): “Disk galaxies in the local Universe universally exhibit negative metallicity gradients, i.e., the centre of a galaxy has a higher metallici y than the outskirts (e.g.,Zaritsky et al. 1994; Moustakas et al. 2010; Rupke et al. 2010b; Sánchez et al. 2014, and references therein).”
• Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – V. Tracing changes in star formation rate and metallicity out to separations of 80 kpc (2012, background): “This gas then falls towards the nucleus of the galaxy, efficiently funnelled by the bar instabilities (Barnes & Hernquist 1996; Mihos & Hernquist 1996; Cox et al. 2006; Di Matteo et al. 2007; Montuori et al. 2010; Rupke et al. 2010a; Torrey et al. 2012).”
• GALAXY-WIDE SHOCKS IN LATE-MERGER STAGE LUMINOUS INFRARED GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “Spectral Fitting We analyzed every spectrum using an automated fitting routine written in IDL, UHSPECFIT, which is based on the code created by Jabran Zahid et al. (2010) and is also employed by and described in Rupke et al. (2010b) and Rich et al. (2010).”
• THEORETICAL EVOLUTION OF OPTICAL STRONG LINES ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2013, background): “Flat metallicity gradients can be produced by large-scale gas flows triggered by galaxy interactions (Kewley et al. 2006a, 2010; Rupke et al. 2010b; Rich et al. 2012).”
• De re metallica: the cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies (2018, background): “35) (Rupke et al., 2010b; Rich et al., 2012b; Torres-Flores et al., 2014b).”
• INTEGRAL FIELD SPECTROSCOPY OF MASSIVE, KILOPARSEC-SCALE OUTFLOWS IN THE INFRARED-LUMINOUS QSO Mrk 231 (2011, methodology): “We modeled the continuum and emission lines in each spectrum using UHSPECFIT, a suite of IDL routines that fits a continuum and emission lines to spectra (Rupke et al. 2010).”
• THE METALLICITY EVOLUTION OF INTERACTING GALAXIES (2011, background): “In fact, dynamical metallicity given by our simulation with instantaneous gas recycling (see the black line in the center panel of Figure 9) is very similar to the results of Rupke et al. (2010a).”
• Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4 (2013, background): “…at z∼3.4 from the FMR may be associated with an increased rate of mergers, which destabilize low metallicity gas in galaxy outskirts and drive it towards the central, active regions as suggested by some models (e.g. Rupke et al. 2010; Perez et al. 2011; Pilkington et al. 2012; Torrey et al. 2012).”
• THE MULTIPHASE STRUCTURE AND POWER SOURCES OF GALACTIC WINDS IN MAJOR MERGERS (2013, unknown): “UHSPECFIT is described elsewhere (Rupke et al. 2010).”
• A characteristic oxygen abundance gradient in galaxy disks unveiled with CALIFA (2013, background): “For a spiral galaxy with a pre-existing metallicity gradient, gas inflow flattens the gradient by diluting the higher abundance gas in the central regions with the lower abundance gas from the outer parts (Rupke et al. 2010a,b; Kewley et al. 2010).”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, result): “By analogy with results in nearby SFGs (e.g. Chien et al. 2007; Kewley et al. 2006, 2010; Rupke et al. 2010; Rich et al. 2012), and in line with predictions from theoretical models and simulations (e.g., Rahimi et al. 2011; Kobayashi & Nakasato 2011; Few et al. 2012; Pilkington et al. 2012; Torrey…”
• NEW STRONG-LINE ABUNDANCE DIAGNOSTICS FOR H ii REGIONS: EFFECTS OF κ-DISTRIBUTED ELECTRON ENERGIES AND NEW ATOMIC DATA (2013, background): “…maintained (Bothun et al. 1984; Wyse & Silk 1985; Skillman et al. 1989; Vila-Costas & Edmunds 1992; Zaritsky et al. 1994; van Zee et al. 1998), and discover how abundance gradients can be removed in galaxy interactions (Kewley et al. 2010; Rupke et al. 2010; Torrey et al. 2012; Rich et al. 2012).”