The Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-forming Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

By Christy A. Tremonti, T. Heckman, G. Kauffmann, J. Brinchmann, S. Charlot, Simon D. M. White, M. Seibert, E. Peng, David Schlegel, A. Uomoto and 2 more. 2004

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We utilize Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging and spectroscopy of ~53,000 star-forming galaxies at z ~ 0.1 to study the relation between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity. We derive gas-phase oxygen abundances and stellar masses using new techniques that make use of the latest stellar evolutionary synthesis and photoionization models. We find a tight (±0.1 dex) correlation between stellar mass and metallicity spanning over 3 orders of magnitude in stellar mass and a factor of 10 in metallicity. The relation is relatively steep from 108.5 to 1010.5 M☉ h, in good accord with known trends between luminosity and metallicity, but flattens above 1010.5 M☉. We use indirect estimates of the gas mass based on the Hα luminosity to compare our data to predictions from simple closed box chemical evolution models. We show that metal loss is strongly anticorrelated with baryonic mass, with low-mass dwarf galaxies being 5 times more metal depleted than L* galaxies at z ~ 0.1. Evidence for metal depletion is not confined to dwarf galaxies but is found in galaxies with masses as high as 1010 M☉. We interpret this as strong evidence of both the ubiquity of galactic winds and their effectiveness in removing metals from galaxy potential wells.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5889b3327d930bc48df429110599886680556e4

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Citations in the corpus

GALAXY PAIRS IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY. I. STAR FORMATION, ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS FRACTION, AND THE LUMINOSITY/MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2008, methodology): “…compiled by the Munich group.4 Pipeline processing which fits galaxy templates and spectral synthesis models to the spectra yields physical properties such as stellar masses and SFRs as well as measurements of line fluxes (e.g., Kauffmann et al. 2003b; Brinchmann et al. 2004; Tremonti et al. 2004).”
SDSS-IV MaNGA : the impact of diffuse ionized gas on emission-line ratios, interpretation of diagnostic diagrams and gas metallicity measurements (2016, background): “…(Moran et al. 2010), the mass-metallicity relation in the local universe (e.g. McClure & 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…”
Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, background): “A mass–metallicity graph (e.g. Tremonti et al. 2004) for SLSN and GRB hosts is presented in Fig.”
The stellar IMF in early-type galaxies from a non-degenerate set of optical line indices (2013, methodology): “…we select systems with very low star-formation rate (SFR < 0.3 M yr −1) using the MPA/JHU value-added galaxy catalog that contains results from the galaxy spectral fitting code described in Tremonti et al. (2004) and star formation rates based on the technique discussed in Brinchmann et al. (2004).”
METALLICITY-DEPENDENT QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION AT HIGH REDSHIFT IN SMALL GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “We fix the absolute calibration of the models by forcing agreement between the models and the Tremonti et al. (2004) data at z = 0.07 and logM∗,11 = −0.5.”
Predicting dust extinction from the stellar mass of a galaxy (2010, methodology): “Tremonti et al. (2004) have identified that the correlation begins to break down at stellar masses above 1010.5 M , with more massive galaxies not continuing to be more metal-rich – this effect can be seen clearly in Fig.”
Colours and luminosities of z = 0.1 galaxies in the eagle simulation (2015, methodology): “M relation from MNRAS 452, 2879–2896 (2015) Tremonti et al. (2004) than Ref-100 for M 1010 M .3 Near the knee of the mass function, however, the EAGLE mass–metallicity relation agrees well with observation (see S15).”
New fully empirical calibrations of strong-line metallicity indicators in star forming galaxies (2016, methodology): “Emission line data has been taken from the MPA/JHU1 catalog, in which also stellar masses (Kauffmann et al. 2003a), SFRs (Brinchmann et al. 2004; Salim et al. 2007) and metallicities (Tremonti et al. 2004) are measured.”
A fundamental plane for field star-forming galaxies (2010, methodology): “Metallicities were estimated statistically using Bayesian techniques according to Tremonti et al. (2004), based on simul- taneous fits of all the most prominent emission lines ([Oii], Hβ, [O iii], Hα, [N ii], [S ii]) using a model designed for the interpretation of integrated galaxy spectra…”
Galaxies with Wolf-Rayet signatures in the low-redshift Universe. A survey using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2008, background): “Metal-rich galaxies are known to be on average more massive (Tremonti et al. 2004) so this would bias against metal rich galaxies.”
Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs (2018, methodology): “These data, based on SDSS DR7 spectroscopic reductions (Tremonti et al. 2004), are available for 97% of target sample galaxies.”
The host galaxies and classification of active galactic nuclei (2006, methodology): “We use the publically available emissionline fluxes (described in Tremonti et al. 2004).”
The SAMI Galaxy Survey: shocks and outflows in a normal star-forming galaxy (2014, neutral): “24 11 v2 [ as tr sponsible for shaping the mass-metallicity relation (Tremonti et al. 2004).”
THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE CLUSTER SUPERNOVA SURVEY. V. IMPROVING THE DARK-ENERGY CONSTRAINTS ABOVE z > 1 AND BUILDING AN EARLY-TYPE-HOSTED SUPERNOVA SAMPLE (2011, background): “…understanding of this correlation, given that more accurate mass, metallicity and age can be assigned to earlytype galaxies (Bruzual & Charlot 2003; Tremonti et al. 2004; 1 Host galaxy metallicity, specific-star-formation rate, orage are also drivers, as these quantities are somewhat degenerate in…”
Extreme Gas Kinematics in the z = 2.2 Powerful Radio Galaxy MRC 1138–262: Evidence for Efficient Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback in the Early Universe? (2006, background): “The local mass-metallicity relationship indicates that local >L galaxies have solar and greater metallicities (Tremonti et al. 2004).”
THE EFFECT OF HOST GALAXIES ON TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE IN THE SDSS-II SUPERNOVA SURVEY (2010, methodology): “…for local SN host galaxies was correlated to the residuals around the best fit distance-redshift relation, which has prompted some authors to look for correlation with the host galaxy stellar mass as a proxy for the metallicity (using the known massmetallicity relationship; Tremonti et al. 2004).”
OBSERVATIONS OF STARBURST GALAXIES WITH FAR-ULTRAVIOLET SPECTROGRAPHIC EXPLORER: GALACTIC FEEDBACK IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2009, background): “Because starbursts in more massive galaxies are known to have higher metallicity (Tremonti et al. 2004), higher SFR, and higher extinction (Heckman et al. 1998), it is especially difficult to sort out the fundamental relations from secondary correlations.”
A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, background): “The grey shaded areas show the region containing 64 and 90 per cent (light grey and dark grey, respectively) of all SDSS galaxies, as given by Tremonti et al. (2004).”
The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers (2019, methodology): “Galaxy catalogues, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Tremonti et al. 2004), show that there is an empirical correlation between the galaxy stellar mass and the mean metallicity of the galaxy.”