On Extending the Mass-Metallicity Relation of Galaxies by 2.5 Decades in Stellar Mass

By Henry Lee, E. Skillman, J. Cannon, D. C. Jackson, R. Gehrz, E. Polomski, Charles E. Woodward. 2006

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We report 4.5 μm luminosities for 27 nearby (D ≲ 5 Mpc) dwarf irregular galaxies measured with the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera. We have constructed the 4.5 μm luminosity-metallicity (L-Z) relation for 25 dwarf galaxies with secure distance and interstellar medium oxygen abundance measurements. The 4.5 μm L-Z relation is 12 + log(O/H) = (5.78 ± 0.21) + (-0.122 ± 0.012)M[4.5], where M[4.5] is the absolute magnitude at 4.5 μm. The dispersion in the near-infrared L-Z relation is smaller than the corresponding dispersion in the optical L-Z relation. The subsequently derived stellar mass-metallicity (M*-Z) relation is 12 + log(O/H) = (5.65 ± 0.23) + (0.298 ± 0.030) log M*, and extends the SDSS M*- Z relation to lower mass by about 2.5 dex. We find that the dispersion in the M*-Z relation is similar over 5 orders of magnitude in stellar mass, and that the relationship between stellar mass and interstellar medium metallicity is similarly tight from high-mass to low-mass systems. We find a larger scatter at low mass in the relation between effective yield and total baryonic mass. In fact, there are a few dwarf galaxies with large yields, which is difficult to explain if galactic winds are ubiquitous in dwarf galaxies. The low scatter in the L-Z and M*-Z relationships are difficult to understand if galactic superwinds or blowout are responsible for the low metallicities at low mass or luminosity. Naively, one would expect an ever increasing scatter at lower masses, which is not observed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e2bd512ea1fc6b65ef4f425cb320bbbbd5377722

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THE ACS NEARBY GALAXY SURVEY TREASURY. VIII. THE GLOBAL STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF 60 DWARF GALAXIES IN THE LOCAL VOLUME (2011, background): “Additionally, these models are generally able explain the observed mass–metallicity relationship for dwarf galaxies (e.g., Lee et al. 2006).”
Galaxy formation in WMAP1 and WMAP7 cosmologies (2012, methodology): “In each case black dots are randomly selected simulated galaxies from the MS-II, while the curves and the red diamonds represent observational data (Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006).”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, background): “Observational data from Tremonti et al. (2004) and Lee et al. (2006) are represented by the solid green curve and the red diamonds, respectively.”
Warm Molecular Hydrogen in the Spitzer SINGS Galaxy Sample (2007, background): “The dwarf galaxy class is here arbitrarily defined by a total stellar mass, estimated by Lee et al. (2006) as below 109.7 M . a A total of 11 extranuclear regions were observed in high-resolution spectroscopy in NGC 5194, from which we included seven in our sample. b Several locations were observed…”
OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY AND NEBULAR OXYGEN ABUNDANCES OF THE SPITZER/SINGS GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “By comparison, Lee et al. (2006a) studied a sample of 25 nearby galaxies with −11 MB −18 and oxygen abundances derived using the direct method and obtained 12 + log (O/H) = 5.94–0.128MB .”
Implementing molecular hydrogen in hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation (2012, methodology): “The stellar masses of the simulated galaxies used in the massmetallicity relationship were calculated from mock-observations of the stellar emission using the same scaling as in Lee et al. (2006).”
The relation between metallicity, stellar mass and star formation in galaxies: an analysis of observational and model data (2011, methodology): “Lee et al. (2006) have used a sample of 27 nearby dwarf galaxies to argue that the scatter in the observed local M∗–”
The Baryon Content of Extremely Low Mass Dwarf Galaxies (2006, background): “For example, the importance of galactic winds in low mass galaxies will strongly affect our understanding of the mass-metallicity relation (Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006) and the enrichment of the intergalactic medium at high redshift (Scannapieco et al. 2005).”
LSD: Lyman-break galaxies Stellar populations and Dynamics – I. Mass, metallicity and gas at z∼ 3.1 (2009, background): “…stellar mass or larger circular velocity have higher metallicities (Garnett 2002; Pérez-González et al. 2003; Pilyugin, Vı́lchez & Contini 2004; Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006; Hayashi et al. 2008; Kewley & Ellison 2008; Liu et al. 2008; Michel-Dansac et al. 2008; Panter et al. 2008).”
An analytic model for the evolution of the stellar, gas and metal content of galaxies (2011, background): “…equilibrium relations is that if one desires the mass-metallicity relation to scale as Z ∝ M 1/3 ∗ at small masses as observed (Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006), then Equation 9 directly implies η ∝ M −1/3 ∗ (assuming αZ ≪ 1), roughly as expected for momentumdriven winds (Murray,…”
THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION WITH THE DIRECT METHOD ON STACKED SPECTRA OF SDSS GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “The scatter and slope of the Lee et al. (2006) MZR are consistent with the T04 MZR (cf. Zahid et al. 2012a), but the Lee et al. (2006) MZR is offset to lower metallicities by 0.2–0.3 dex.”
The Origin and Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relationship for Galaxies: Results from Cosmological N-Body Simulations (2006, methodology): “Recently, studies have investigated how the MZR evolves with cosmic time (S05; E06; Dave´ t al.”
THE HOST GALAXIES OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. A MASS–METALLICITY RELATION FOR LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES (2010, background): “Savaglio et al. (2009) also see no metallicity offset when comparing the GRB host sample to local star-forming dwarf galaxies from Lee et al. (2006) and higher-redshift galaxies from GDDS.”
THE UNIVERSAL STELLAR MASS–STELLAR METALLICITY RELATION FOR DWARF GALAXIES (2013, background): “Lee et al. (2006a) measured stellar masses for dwarf galaxies based on 4.5 µm luminosity, which is less sensitive to age, SFH, and dust than visible luminosity.”
Clues to the Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Dependence on Star Formation Rate and Galaxy Size (2007, background): “…luminosity-metallicity relation (LZR) that exists over at least 10 mag in M (e.g., Skillman et al.B 1989; Zaritsky et al. 1994; Salzer et al. 2005; Lee et al. 2006a) has been recently confirmed to be a manifestation of a more fundamental stellar mass-metallicity relation (MZR; Lequeux et al.…”
Characterizing Supernova Progenitors via the Metallicities of their Host Galaxies, from Poor Dwarfs to Rich Spirals (2007, methodology): “Using photometry and images from SDSS DR6, we estimate the luminosity of the apparent host galaxy to be MB 12, most likely a very metal-poor dwarf [12þ log(O/H) 7:5, or 1/20 solar; see the metallicity-luminosity relationship extended to dwarf galaxies by Lee et al. 2006].”
Scaling relations and the fundamental line of the local group dwarf galaxies (2008, result): “Our slope is also a slightly better match to the low-mass end of the SDSS galaxies than that of Lee et al. (2006).”
LOW CO LUMINOSITIES IN DWARF GALAXIES (2012, background): “However, due to the strong luminosity–metallicity relation for dwarf irregulars (e.g., Lee et al. 2006; Guseva et al. 2009), it is also correlated to MB (i.e., the top panel).”
Galaxy Evolution in Cosmological Simulations with Outflows II: Metallicities and Gas Fractions (2011, methodology): “Another example is the correlation between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity, called the mass-metallicity relation (MZR; e.g. Tremonti et al. 2004), which shows a remarkably low scatter across a wide range in mass (Lee et al. 2006; Zhao, Gao, & Gu 2010).”