THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION WITH THE DIRECT METHOD ON STACKED SPECTRA OF SDSS GALAXIES

By B. Andrews, P. Martini. 2012

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The relation between galaxy stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity is a sensitive diagnostic of the main processes that drive galaxy evolution, namely cosmological gas inflow, metal production in stars, and gas outflow via galactic winds. We employed the direct method to measure the metallicities of ∼200,000 star-forming galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that were stacked in bins of (1) stellar mass and (2) both stellar mass and star formation rate (SFR) to significantly enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of the weak [O iii] λ4363 and [O ii] λλ7320, 7330 auroral lines required to apply the direct method. These metallicity measurements span three decades in stellar mass from log(M⋆/M☉) = 7.4–10.5, which allows the direct method mass–metallicity relation to simultaneously capture the high-mass turnover and extend a full decade lower in mass than previous studies that employed more uncertain strong line methods. The direct method mass–metallicity relation rises steeply at low mass (O/H ∝ M⋆1/2) until it turns over at log(M⋆/M☉) = 8.9 and asymptotes to 12 + log(O/H) = 8.8 at high mass. The direct method mass–metallicity relation has a steeper slope, a lower turnover mass, and a factor of two to three greater dependence on SFR than strong line mass–metallicity relations. Furthermore, the SFR-dependence appears monotonic with stellar mass, unlike strong line mass–metallicity relations. We also measure the N/O abundance ratio, an important tracer of star formation history, and find the clear signature of primary and secondary nitrogen enrichment. N/O correlates tightly with oxygen abundance, and even more so with stellar mass.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f3b4b88c3db9614cb663bf04314965f054856898

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Citations in the corpus

• Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4 (2013, background): “At a given stellar mass the metallicity decreases with increasing SFR (Kewley et al. 2006; Ellison et al. 2008; Mannucci et al. 2010; Lara Lopez et al. 2010; Cresci et al. 2012; Yates et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013; Pérez-Montero et al. 2013).”
• THE MOSDEF SURVEY: ELECTRON DENSITY AND IONIZATION PARAMETER AT z ∼ 2.3 (2015, methodology): “…between M∗ and metallicity, known as the mass-metallicity relation (MZR; Lequeux et al. 1979; Tremonti et al. 2004; Kewley & Ellison 2008; Mannucci et al. 2010; Andrews & Martini 2013), and an anticorrelation between metallicity and ionization parameter (Pérez-Montero 2014; Sánchez et al. 2015).”
• THE UNIVERSAL STELLAR MASS–STELLAR METALLICITY RELATION FOR DWARF GALAXIES (2013, background): “The flattening also happens in the gasphase MZR (Tremonti et al. 2004; Andrews & Martini 2013; Zahid et al. 2013).”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, methodology): “…II]/Hα ratio, as amply discussed in the literature 5 (e.g., Kewley & Dopita 2002; Kewley et al. 2013; Pérez-Montero & Contini 2009; Yuan et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013; Steidel et al. 2014; Shapley et al. 2015; Sanders et al. 2015, 2017; Kashino et al. 2017; Strom et al. 2017; Cresci et al.…”
• PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF EMISSION-LINE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 FROM NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY WITH MAGELLAN FIRE (2014, background): “…log(N/O) values as a function of 12+log(O/H) in the literature (van Zee et al. 1998; Liang et al. 2006; van Zee & Haynes 2006; Berg et al. 2012; Andrews & Martini 2013), we find that the log(N/O) of the FIRE composite is higher by approximately 0.4 dex than the average value for galaxies at…”
• simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, background): “Fits to observations at z = 0 are shown from strong emission line fitting (Tremonti et al. 2004, black dashed), stacked measurement of direct metallicities (Andrews & Martini 2013, black dot-dashed), and individual semi-direct metallicities (Yates et al. 2019, black dotted).”
• The mass–metallicity and the fundamental metallicity relation revisited on a fully Te-based abundance scale for galaxies (2019, methodology): “…best-fit α value of 0.55, larger than what found by Mannucci et al. (2010) (α = 0.32) but lower than other previous estimates (e.g. α = 0.66 as found by Andrews & Martini 2013); however, it is well known that the relative strength of the secondary dependence of the MZR on the SFR can be strongly…”
• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, background): “Now that metal depletion is properly accounted for, we can assess how well our model reproduces the observed relationship between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity (Maiolino et al. 2008; Mannucci et al. 2009; Andrews & Martini 2013; Zahid et al. 2014).”
• Towards a more realistic population of bright spiral galaxies in cosmological simulations (2013, background): “We include three different observed z = 0 relations by Tremonti et al. (2004), Andrews & Martini (2013) and by Maiolino et al. (2008) and compare our results to them.”
• Star formation sustained by gas accretion (2014, background): “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).”
• RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “Nevertheless, the applicability of this relation is a source of some controversy; for example, Andrews & Martini (2013) (AM13) have shown that for composite SDSS galaxy spectra in bins of M∗ and SFR, the standard T2 −T3 relation systematically over-predicts 23 The inferred Te-based oxygen…”
• THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “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).”
• 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).”
• New fully empirical calibrations of strong-line metallicity indicators in star forming galaxies (2016, methodology): “Similarly to Andrews & Martini (2013), we consider the fit not sufficiently robust when the λ4360 emission flux resulted ≥ 0.5 times the flux measured for [Oiii] λ4363.”
• 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).”
• STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, methodology): “…(N/O) with (O/H) (e.g., Pérez-Montero & Contini 2009) or a significantly higher (O/H) at the transition from primary to primary+secondary N (e.g., Andrews & Martini 2013)– suggesting that the precise behavior depends on the nature of the calibration sample and the details of the methods used to…”
• Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, unknown): “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).”