Is there a dependence in metallicity evolution on galaxy structures?

Author(s): Ulrike Kuchner, Christian Maier, Bodo Ziegler, Miguel Anibal Verdugo Olivares, Oliver Czoske
Abstract: We investigate the environmental dependence of the mass-metallicty (MZ) relation and its connection to galaxy stellar structures and morphologies. In our studies, we analyze galaxies in massive clusters at z ~ 0.4 from the CLASH (HST) and CLASH-VLT surveys and measure their gas metallicities, star-formation rates, stellar structures and morphologies. We establish the MZ relation for 90 cluster and 40 field galaxies finding a shift of ~ - 0.3 dex in comparison to the local trends seen in SDSS for the majority of galaxies with logM < 10.5. We do not find significant differences of the distribution of 4 distinct morphological types that we introduce by our classification scheme (smooth, disc-like, peculiar, compact). Some variations between cluster and field galaxies in the MZ relation are visible at the high mass end. However, obvious trends for cluster specific interactions (enhancements or quenching of SFRs) are missing. In particular, galaxies with peculiar stellar structures that hold signs for galaxy interactions, are distributed in a similar way as disc-like galaxies - in SFRs, masses and O/H abundances. We further show that our sample falls around an extrapolation of the star-forming main sequence (the SFR-M* relation) at this redshift, indicating that emission-line selected samples do not have preferentially high star-formation rates (SFRs). However, we find that half of the high mass cluster members (M* > 10¹⁰ M_⊙) lie below the main sequence which corresponds to the higher mass objects that reach solar abundances in the MZ diagram.
Organisation(s): Department of Astrophysics
Pages: 289 - 290
No. of pages: 2
Publication date: 02-2015
Austrian Fields of Science 2012: 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
Portal url: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/is-there-a-dependence-in-metallicity-evolution-on-galaxy-structures(17870b4d-d962-45f9-b209-1a7da887b974).html

Back