A BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING OF METALS AT z ∼ 0: RESULTS FROM THE COS-HALOS SURVEY

By Molly Peeples, Jessica Werk, Jason Tumlinson, B. Oppenheimer, J. Xavier Prochaska, Neal Katz, D. Weinberg. 2013

216 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a budget and accounting of metals in and around star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 0. We combine empirically derived star formation histories with updated supernova and asymptotic giant branch yields and rates to estimate the total mass of metals produced by galaxies with present-day stellar mass of 109.3–1011.6 M☉. On the accounting side of the ledger, we show that a surprisingly constant 20%–25% mass fraction of produced metals remain in galaxies' stars, interstellar gas and interstellar dust, with little dependence of this fraction on the galaxy stellar mass (omitting those metals immediately locked up in remnants). Thus, the bulk of metals are outside of galaxies, produced in the progenitors of today's L* galaxies. The COS-Halos survey is uniquely able to measure the mass of metals in the circumgalactic medium (CGM, to impact parameters of <150 kpc) of low-redshift ∼L* galaxies. Using these data, we map the distribution of CGM metals as traced by both the highly ionized O vi ion and a suite of low-ionization species; combined with constraints on circumgalactic dust and hotter X-ray emitting gas out to similar impact parameters, we show that ∼40% of metals produced by M⋆ ∼ 1010 M☉ galaxies can be easily accounted for out to 150 kpc. With the current data, we cannot rule out a constant mass of metals within this fixed physical radius. This census provides a crucial boundary condition for the eventual fate of metals in galaxy evolution models.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a23f891bdc101bb587cd6d5c7202d0bd90db3c68

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Citations in the corpus

Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, methodology): “…is possible to put constraints on the inflow and outflow history by studying the global metallicity of star-forming galaxies using the mass-metallicity relation (e.g.,Spitoni et al. 2010; Peeples & Shankar 2011; Zahid et al. 2012; Lilly et al. 2013; Peeples et al. 2014; see alsoDavé et al. 2011a).”
The COS-Halos Survey: Metallicities in the Low-redshift Circumgalactic Medium (2017, background): “This is higher than the estimates of W14 and Peeples et al. (2014) albeit with larger uncertainty.”
Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo (FOGGIE). I. Resolving Simulated Circumgalactic Absorption at 2 ≤ z ≤ 2.5 (2018, background): “In the galactic ecosystem, the majority of baryons and heavy elements are in the diffuse gas outside of galaxies rather than in the relatively dense gas and stars composing the disks and central spheroids (Pagel 2008; Stocke et al. 2013; Peeples et al. 2014; Werk et al. 2014; Prochaska et al. 2017).”
Bimodality of low-redshift circumgalactic O VI in non-equilibrium EAGLE zoom simulations (2016, background): “This enables us to consider the total metal budget inside and beyond galaxies as done by Bouché et al. (2007); Zahid et al. (2012); Peeples et al. (2014).”
THE COS-DWARFS SURVEY: THE CARBON RESERVOIR AROUND SUB-L* GALAXIES (2014, methodology): “In this study, akin to the COS-Halos survey, we adopt a “galaxy selected” approach (Bordoloi et al. 2011; Tumlinson et al. 2013).”
The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, methodology): “Star-forming galaxies over ∼ 3 decades in stellar mass retain a surprisingly flat ∼ 20–25% of the metals they have ever produced (Peeples et al. 2014) in their stars, ISM gas, and dust.”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “…IGM can be used to measure the total ionizing photon production of galaxies (Haardt & Madau 1996; Miralda-Escudé 2003; Faucher-Giguère et al. 2008b; Becker & Bolton 2013) as well as galaxies’ stellar nucleosynthetic yield, as a large fraction is ejected into the IGM (e.g. Peeples et al. 2014).”
The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, background): “These predictions suggest that a large fraction of the dust (and metals) ever formed may be stored outside galaxies (Peeples et al. 2014; Peek, Ménard & Corrales 2015).”
THE COS-HALOS SURVEY: ORIGINS OF THE HIGHLY IONIZED CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2016, background): “The latter are partially absorbed by the galaxy ISM, with He and dust being important sources of opacity.”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “We also show the local MZR from Peeples et al. (2014), which uses the average of all of the calibrations presented in Kewley & Ellison (2008), and the local “direct method” MZR from Andrews & Martini (2013).”