A Census of Sub-kiloparsec Resolution Metallicity Gradients in Star-forming Galaxies at Cosmic Noon from HST Slitless Spectroscopy

Abstract

We present hitherto the largest sample of gas-phase metallicity radial gradients measured at sub-kiloparsec resolution in star-forming galaxies in the redshift range of $z\in [1.2,2.3]$. These measurements are enabled by the synergy of slitless spectroscopy from the Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared channels and the lensing magnification from foreground galaxy clusters. Our sample consists of 76 galaxies with stellar mass ranging from 10${}^7$ to 10${}^{10}$ $M_{\odot }$, instantaneous star-formation rate in the range of [1, 100] $M_{\odot }$/yr, and global metallicity [$\frac{1}{12}$, 2] solar. At 2-$\sigma$ confidence level, 15/76 galaxies in our sample show negative radial gradients, whereas 7/76 show inverted gradients. Combining ours and all other metallicity gradients obtained at similar resolution currently available in the literature, we measure a negative mass dependence of $\Delta \log (O/H)/\Delta r[\mathrm{dex}\mathrm{kp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-1}]=\left(-0.020\pm 0.007\right)+\left(-0.016\pm 0.008\right)\log (M_{\ast }/10^{9.4}{M}_{\odot })$ with the intrinsic scatter being $\sigma =0.060\pm 0.006$ over four orders of magnitude in stellar mass. Our result is consistent with strong feedback, not secular processes, being the primary governor of the chemo-structural evolution of star-forming galaxies during the disk mass assembly at cosmic noon. We also find that the intrinsic scatter of metallicity gradients increases with decreasing stellar mass and increasing specific star-formation rate. This increase in the intrinsic scatter is likely caused by the combined effect of cold-mode gas accretion and merger-induced starbursts, with the latter more predominant in the dwarf mass regime of $M_{\ast }\lesssim 10^9{M}_{\odot }$.

arXiv comment86 pages, 75 figures, 3 tables, and 2 appendices, accepted to ApJ

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