The relation between metallicity, stellar mass and star formation in galaxies: an analysis of observational and model data

By R. Yates, G. Kauffmann, Qi Guo. 2011

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study relations between stellar mass, star formation and gas-phase metallicity in a sample of 177,071 unique emission line galaxies from the SDSS-DR7, as well as in a sample of 43,767 star forming galaxies at z = 0 from the cosmological semianalytic model L-Galaxies. We demonstrate that metallicity is dependent on star formation rate at fixed mass, but that the trend is opposite for low and for high stellar mass galaxies. Low-mass galaxies that are actively forming stars are more metal-poor than quiescent low-mass galaxies. High-mass galaxies, on the other hand, have lower gas-phase metallicities if their star formation rates are small. Remarkably, the same trends are found for our sample of model galaxies. By examining the evolution of the stellar component, gas and metals as a function of time in these galaxies, we gain some insight into the physical processes that may be responsible for these trends. We find that massive galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities have undergone a gas-rich merger in the past, inducing a starburst which exhausted their cold gas reservoirs and shut down star formation. Thereafter, these galaxies were able to accrete metal-poor gas, but this gas remained at too low a density to form stars efficiently. This led to a gradual dilution in the gas-phase metallicities of these systems over time. These model galaxies are predicted to have lower-than-averagegas-to-stellar mass ratios and higherthan-average central black hole masses. We use our observational sample to confirm that real massive galaxies with low gas-phase metallicities also have very massive black holes. We propose that accretion may therefore play a significant role in regulating the gas-phase metallicities of present-day massive galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/abc2959c6648163b2d8116fbb2af956ae9db835f

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Maiolino
4. R. Dav'e
5. C. Conroy
6. D. M. Alexander
7. R. Somerville
8. Thomas J. Cox

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. C. Conroy
4. R. Maiolino
5. A. Dekel
6. A. Renzini
7. S. Wuyts
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• SDSS-IV MaNGA : the impact of diffuse ionized gas on emission-line ratios, interpretation of diagnostic diagrams and gas metallicity measurements (2016, background): “…& van den Bergh, 1968; Lequeux et al. 1979; Garnett 2002; Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006) and at high redshift (Erb et al. 2006; Maiolino et al. 2008; Mannucci et al. 2009), and the massmetallicity-SFR fundamental plane (Mannucci et al. 2010; Yates et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013).”
• The role of cold gas and environment on the stellar mass-metallicity relation of nearby galaxies (2012, methodology): “In order to compare it’s scatter to the scatter of the M∗ − Z − SFR plane, we follow the method of Yates et al. (2012).”
• Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4 (2013, methodology): “More detailed models and simulations have been presented by various authors to interpret the FMR (Davé et al. 2011b; Lagos et al. 2011; Davé et al. 2012; Yates et al. 2012; Dayal et al. 2013; Lilly et al. 2013; Forbes et al. 2013).”
• The mass–metallicity and the fundamental metallicity relation revisited on a fully Te-based abundance scale for galaxies (2019, background): “, metallicity and SFR has been observed and confirmed by several authors (Yates et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013; Nakajima & Ouchi 2014; Salim et al. 2014; Grasshorn Gebhardt et al. 2016; Hunt et al. 2016; Hirschauer et al. 2018).”
• GAS REGULATION OF GALAXIES: THE EVOLUTION OF THE COSMIC SPECIFIC STAR FORMATION RATE, THE METALLICITY–MASS–STAR-FORMATION RATE RELATION, AND THE STELLAR CONTENT OF HALOS (2013, background): “…uncertainties in the estimation of gas-phase metallicities from emission line spectra (see e.g. discussion in Kewley & Dopita 2002, Kewley & Ellison 2008, Andrews & Martini 2012, Yates et al 2012) and different analyses produce significantly different metallicities, even from the same input data.”
• Mass-metallicity relation explored with CALIFA I. Is there a dependence on the star-formation rate? (2013, background): “…authors found that these three quantities define either a surface or a plane in the corresponding 3D space, i.e., the so-called Fundamental MassMetallicity relation (FMR) and/orM-Z-Fundamental Plane, depending on the authors (Lara-López et al. 2010; Mannucci et al. 2010; Yates et al. 2012).”
• Star formation sustained by gas accretion (2014, methodology): “The relationship presents a significant scatter that has been recently found to be associated with the present SFR in the galaxy (Mannucci et al. 2010; Lara-López et al. 2010; Yates et al. 2012; Pérez-Montero et al. 2013; Andrews & Martini 2013; Zahid et al. 2013).”
• Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, background): “The mass-metallicity relation may also have an additional dependency on star formation rate (SFR; e.g.,Mannucci et al. 2010; Lara-López et al. 2010; Yates et al. 2012).”
• THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, background): “A relation between stellar mass, metallicity and star formation rate (SFR) is observed in local (Mannucci et al. 2010; Lara-López et al. 2010; Yates et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013) and high redshift galaxies (Zahid et al. 2013b; Yabe et al. 2014; Troncoso et al. 2014).”
• The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies (2013, background): “Moreover, the detailed shape of the FMR is matter of debate (e.g. Yates et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013).”
• THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION WITH THE DIRECT METHOD ON STACKED SPECTRA OF SDSS GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “The scatter for the stacks differs from the scatter for individual galaxies (like the Mannucci et al. 2010 and Yates et al. 2012 studies) because the number of galaxies per stack varies.”