Determining the large-scale environmental dependence of gas-phase metallicity in dwarf galaxies

Abstract

We study how the cosmic environment affects galaxy evolution in the Universe by comparing the metallicities of dwarf galaxies in voids with dwarf galaxies in more dense regions. Ratios of the fluxes of emission lines, particularly those of the forbidden [O III] and [S II] transitions, provide estimates of a region's electron temperature and number density. From these two quantities and the emission line fluxes [O II] 3727, [O III] 4363, and [O III] 4959,5007, we estimate the abundance of oxygen with the Direct Te method. We estimate the metallicity of 42 blue, star-forming void dwarf galaxies and 89 blue, star-forming dwarf galaxies in more dense regions using spectroscopic observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, as re-processed in the MPA-JHU value-added catalog. We find very little difference between the two sets of galaxies, indicating little influence from the large-scale environment on their chemical evolution. Of particular interest are a number of extremely metal-poor dwarf galaxies that are less prevalent in voids than in the denser regions.

15 pages, 11 figures, published in ApJ; updated declination units

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Updated void catalogs of the SDSS DR7 main sample
• The Stellar Kinematics of Void Dwarf Galaxies Using KCWI
• The influence of the void environment on the ratio of dark matter halo mass to stellar mass in SDSS MaNGA galaxies
• Void Galaxy Distribution: A Challenge for $\Lambda$CDM
• Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam excavates colossal over- and under-dense structures over 360 deg2 out to z=1
• Influence of the Void Environment on Chemical Abundances in Dwarf Galaxies and Implications for Connecting Star Formation and Halo Mass
• Large-scale environmental dependence of the abundance ratio of nitrogen to oxygen in blue, star-forming galaxies fainter than L*
• The galaxy-environment connection revealed by constrained simulations