The Redshift Evolution of the Relation between Stellar Mass, Star Formation Rate, and Gas Metallicity of Galaxies

Abstract

We investigate the relation between stellar mass ($M_{\star }$), star formation rate (SFR), and metallicity ($Z$) of galaxies, so called the fundamental metallicity relation, in the galaxy sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. We separate the galaxies into narrow redshift bins and compare the relation at different redshifts, and find statistically significant ($>99$%) evolution. We test various observational effects that might cause seeming $Z$ evolution, and find it difficult to explain the evolution of the relation only by the observational effects. In the current sample of low redshift galaxies, galaxies with different $M_{\star }$ and SFR are sampled from different redshifts, and there is degeneracy between $M_{\star }$/SFR and redshift. Hence it is not straightforward to distinguish a relation between $Z$ and SFR from a relation between $Z$ and redshift. The separation of the intrinsic relation from the redshift evolution effect is a crucial issue to understand evolution of galaxies.

8 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ, added discussions about the noise in the galaxy spectra

References in corpus (6)

• UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• Clues to the Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Dependence on Star Formation Rate and Galaxy Size
• Metallicities and Physical Conditions in Star-forming Galaxies at z~1.0-1.5
• SEDfit: Software for Spectral Energy Distribution Fitting of Photometric Data
• Physical properties of galaxies and their evolution in the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey. I. The evolution of the mass-metallicity relation up to z~0.9

Cited by in corpus (11)

• De Re Metallica: The cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies
• Ionization State of Inter-Stellar Medium in Galaxies: Evolution, SFR-M_star-Z Dependence, and Ionizing Photon Escape
• The Universal Relation of Galactic Chemical Evolution: The Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation
• The FMOS-Cosmos Survey of Star-Forming Galaxies at z~1.6 II. The Mass-Metallicity Relation and the Dependence on Star Formation Rate and Dust Extinction
• The Mass-Metallicity-SFR Relation at z >~ 2 with 3D-HST
• Fundamental metallicity relation in CALIFA, SDSS-IV MaNGA and high-z galaxies
• Spectrum of the Supernova Relic Neutrino Background and Metallicity Evolution of Galaxies
• Nature of H-alpha selected galaxies at z>2. I. Main sequence and dusty star-forming galaxies
• On the relation between sSFR and metallicity
• The redshift selected sample of long gamma-ray burst host galaxies: the overall metallicity distribution at $z<0.4$
• Gravitational-Wave Background from Binary Mergers and Metallicity Evolution of Galaxies