The Metallicity and Elemental Abundance Gradients of Simulated Galaxies, and their Environmental Dependence

Abstract

The internal distribution of heavy elements, in particular the radial metallicity gradient, offers insight into the merging history of galaxies. Using our cosmological, chemodynamical simulations that include both detailed chemical enrichment and feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN), we find that stellar metallicity gradients in the most massive galaxies ($\sim 3\times 10^{10}$M${}_{\odot }$) are made flatter by mergers and are unable to regenerate due to the quenching of star formation by AGN feedback. The fitting range is chosen on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis in order to mask satellite galaxies. The evolutionary paths of the gradients can be summarised as follows; i) creation of initial steep gradients by gas-rich assembly, ii) passive evolution by star formation and/or stellar accretion at outskirts, iii) sudden flattening by mergers. There is a significant scatter in gradients at a given mass, which originates from the last path, and therefore from galaxy type. Some variation remains at given galaxy mass and type because of the complexity of merging events, and hence we find only a weak environmental dependence. Our early-type galaxies (ETGs), defined from the star formation main sequence rather than their morphology, are in excellent agreement with the observed stellar metallicity gradients of ETGs in the SAURON and ATLAS3D surveys. We find small positive [O/Fe] gradients of stars in our simulated galaxies, although they are smaller with AGN feedback. Gas-phase metallicity and [O/Fe] gradients also show variation, the origin of which is not as clear as for stellar populations.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS. 18 pages, 16 figures

References in corpus (53)

• Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Parameter Results
• The many lives of active galactic nuclei: cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Modeling feedback from stars and black holes in galaxy mergers
• New Insight on Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Keck Spectroscopy of the Hawaii Deep Fields
• Radiative Transfer in a Clumpy Universe: II. The Utraviolet Extragalactic Background
• CALIFA, the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey: I. Survey presentation
• Galaxy Structure and Mode of Star Formation in the SFR-Mass Plane from z ~ 2.5 to z ~ 0.1
• The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time
• The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation of Galaxies with Extended Rotation Curves and the Stellar Mass of Rotating Galaxies
• The Aquila comparison Project: The Effects of Feedback and Numerical Methods on Simulations of Galaxy Formation
• The Atlas3D project - VII. A new look at the morphology of nearby galaxies: the kinematic morphology-density relation
• The Atlas3D project -- IV: the molecular gas content of early-type galaxies
• The Evolution of Isotope Ratios in the Milky Way Galaxy
• An Objective Definition for the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies
• The Environment of ``E+A'' Galaxies
• The SAURON project - XVII. Stellar population analysis of the absorption line strength maps of 48 early-type galaxies
• GRAPE-SPH Chemodynamical Simulation of Elliptical Galaxies I: Evolution of Metallicity Gradients
• Dissipation and Extra Light in Galactic Nuclei: II. 'Cusp' Ellipticals
• Gas accretion as the origin of chemical abundance gradients in distant galaxies
• Chemodynamical Simulations of the Milky Way Galaxy
• Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: Insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals
• Gas-Phase Oxygen Gradients in Strongly Interacting Galaxies: I. Early-Stage Interactions
• Stellar Population gradients in galaxy discs from the CALIFA survey
• Simulations of Cosmic Chemical Enrichment
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Shocks and Outflows in a normal star-forming galaxy
• The Role of Type Ia Supernovae in Chemical Evolution I: Lifetime of Type Ia Supernovae and Galactic Supernova Rates
• Gradients of Absorption Line Strengths in Elliptical Galaxies
• Early-type galaxies at large galactocentric radii - II. Metallicity gradients, and the [Z/H]--mass, [alpha/Fe]--mass relations
• Weighing Galaxy Disks with the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation
• Metallicity Gradient of a Lensed Face-on Spiral Galaxy at Redshift 1.49
• The mass-metallicity gradient relation of early-type galaxies
• Galaxy morphology, luminosity and, environment in the SDSS DR7
• Measurement of a Metallicity Gradient in a z=2 Galaxy: Implications for Inside-Out Assembly Histories
• The Evolution of Dwarf Galaxies with Star Formation in Outward Propagating Super Shell
• Abundance gradient slopes versus mass in spheroids: predictions by monolithic models
• The origin of the atomic and molecular gas contents of early-type galaxies. I. A new test of galaxy formation physics
• A sub-resolution multiphase interstellar medium model of star formation and SNe energy feedback
• The Effects of AGN Feedback on Present-Day Galaxy Properties in Cosmological Simulations
• The chemical evolution of local star forming galaxies: Radial profiles of ISM metallicity, gas mass, and stellar mass and constraints on galactic accretion and winds
• Seeding Black Holes in Cosmological Simulations
• Do observed metallicity gradients of early-type galaxies support a hybrid formation scenario?
• Properties of simulated Milky Way-mass galaxies in loose group and field environments
• Spatial kinematics of Brightest Cluster Galaxies and their close companions from Integral Field Unit spectroscopy
• New results on the time variation of the radial abundance gradients from planetary nebulae
• Time Evolution of Galaxy Scaling Relations in Cosmological Simulations
• The stellar metallicity gradients in galaxy discs in a cosmological scenario
• An estimate of the time variation of the abundance gradient from planetary nebulae III. O, S, Ar, and Ne: A comparison of PN samples
• Quantifying AGN-Driven Metal-Enhanced Outflows in Chemodynamical Simulations
• Star Formation in Simulated Galaxies: Understanding the Transition to Quiescence at $3\times 10^{10}$ M${}_{\odot }$
• Mg2 gradients as a signature of brightest cluster galaxy evolution

Cited by in corpus (35)

• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Global stellar population and gradients for about 2000 early-type and spiral galaxies on the mass-size plane
• Cosmic Rates of Black Hole Mergers and Pair-Instability Supernovae from Chemically Homogeneous Binary Evolution
• Timing the formation and assembly of early-type galaxies via spatially resolved stellar populations analysis
• Insights into formation scenarios of massive Early-Type galaxies from spatially resolved stellar population analysis in CALIFA
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Modelling the metallicity gradients of gas and stars - radially dependent metal outflow vs IMF
• Resolved galaxy scaling relations in the EAGLE simulation: star formation, metallicity and stellar mass on kpc scales
• Evolution of N/O ratios in galaxies from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations
• Gas-phase metallicity gradients in galaxies at $z\sim 6-8$
• The MAGPI Survey -- science goals, design, observing strategy, early results and theoretical framework
• Signatures of stellar accretion in MaNGA early-type galaxies
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: global and local stellar population properties of elliptical galaxies
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: stellar population gradients of central galaxies
• The Contribution of In-situ and Ex-situ Star Formation in Early-Type Galaxies: MaNGA versus IllustrisTNG
• The origin of kinematically distinct cores and misaligned gas discs in galaxies from cosmological simulations
• The Evolution of Gas-Phase Metallicity and Resolved Abundances in Star-forming Galaxies at $z\approx 0.6-1.8$
• An exquisitely deep view of quenching galaxies through the gravitational lens: Stellar population, morphology, and ionized gas
• The assembly of spheroid-dominated galaxies in the EAGLE simulation
• Mapping Accreted Stars in Early-Type Galaxies Across the Mass-Size Plane
• Evidence that Emission and Absorption Outflows in Quasars Are Related
• The mass-size plane of EAGLE galaxies
• On the [$\alpha$/Fe]-[Fe/H] relations in early-type galaxies
• The Puzzling Origin of Massive Compact Galaxies in MaNGA
• The Most Predictive Physical Properties for the Stellar Population Radial Profiles of Nearby Galaxies
• Impact of Galaxy Mergers on Stellar Population Profiles of Early-type Galaxies
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: The effect of stellar mass and halo mass on the assembly histories of satellite galaxies
• Unravelling stellar populations in the Andromeda Galaxy
• Oxygen Loss from Simulated Galaxies and the Metal Flow Main Sequence: Predicting the Dependence on Mass and Environment
• Rediscovering the Milky Way with orbit superposition approach and APOGEE data II. Chrono-chemo-kinematics of the disc
• Comparison of the Stellar Populations of Bulges and Discs using the MaNGA Survey
• The metallicity and elemental abundance maps of kinematically atypical galaxies for constraining minor merger and accretion histories
• Quantifying stochasticity-driven uncertainties in H II region metallicities
• The Color Gradients of the Globular Cluster Systems in M87 and M49
• The ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST Survey: Gas-phase abundance gradients of main sequence star-forming galaxies and their kinematics at $4<z<6$
• Aligned and misaligned metallicity gradients in young stars and star-forming regions in the EAGLE discs
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: How the stellar populations of passive central galaxies depend on stellar and halo mass