Expanding on the Fundamental Metallicity Relation in Dwarf Galaxies with MUSE

Autor(en)
Teodora-Elena Bulichi, Katja Fahrion, François Mernier, Michael Hilker, Ryan Leaman, Mariya Lyubenova, Oliver Müller, Nadine Neumayer, Ignacio Martin Navarro, Francesca Pinna, Marina Rejkuba, Laura Scholz-Diaz, Glenn van de Ven
Abstrakt

The mass-metallicity relation (MZR) represents one of the most important scaling relations in the context of galaxy evolution, comprising a positive correlation between stellar mass and metallicity (Z). The fundamental metallicity relation (FMR) introduces a new parameter, the star formation rate (SFR), in the dependence. While several studies found that Z is anti-correlated with the SFR at fixed mass, the validity of this statement has been questioned extensively and no widely-accepted consensus has been reached yet. With this work, we investigate the FMR in nine nearby, spatially-resolved, dwarf galaxies, using gas diagnostics on integral-field spectroscopic data of the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), pushing such investigations to lower galaxy masses and higher resolutions. We find that both the MZR and FMR exhibit different behaviours within different star forming regions of the galaxies. We find that the SFR surface density - metallicity anti-correlation is tighter in the low-mass galaxies of our sample. For all the galaxies considered, we find a SFR surface density - stellar mass surface density correlation. We propose that the main reason behind these findings is connected to the accretion mechanisms of the gas fuelling star formation -- low-mass, metal-poor galaxies accrete pristine gas from the intergalactic medium, while in more massive and metal-enriched systems the gas responsible for star formation is recycled from previous star forming episodes.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Astrophysik
Externe Organisation(en)
European Space Research & Technology Centre (ESA/ESTEC), University of Edinburgh, SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research , European Southern Observatory (Germany), École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Universidad de La Laguna
Journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Band
679
Anzahl der Seiten
14
ISSN
0004-6361
Publikationsdatum
11-2023
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
103003 Astronomie, 103004 Astrophysik
Schlagwörter
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/3fbd6ad4-711a-4313-bdf3-47955e584b73