Revisiting the fundamental metallicity relation with observation and simulation

Abstract

The gas-phase metallicity of galaxies is regulated by multiple astrophysical processes, which makes it a crucial diagnostic of galaxy formation and evolution. Beyond the fundamental mass-metallicity relation, a debate about the secondary galaxy property to predict the metallicity of galaxies arises. Motivated by this, we systematically examine the relationship between gas-phase metallicity and other galaxy properties, i.e. star formation rate (SFR) and galaxy size, in addition to stellar mass in both observation and simulation. We utilize the data from the MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) survey and the TNG50 simulations. We find that the combination of $M_{\ast }/R_{\mathrm{e}}^{\beta }$ with $\beta \sim 0.6-1$ is in much stronger correlation to the metallicity than stellar mass alone, regardless of whether the SFR is included or not, in both observation and simulation. This indicates that galaxy size plays a more important role in determining gas-phase metallicity of galaxies than SFR. In addition, the TNG simulation predicts that the SFR, although being a subdominant role, becomes increasingly important in high-$z$ universe. Finally, we speculate that SFR modulates metallicity on the temporal dimension, synchronized with time-varying gas inflows, and galaxy size regulates metallicity on the spatial dimension by affecting the gravitational potential and the mass loading factor.

arXiv comment11 pages, 6 figures, ApJL accepted

References in corpus (49)

• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Simulating Galaxy Formation with the IllustrisTNG Model
• Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy color bimodality
• Using Strong Lines to Estimate Abundances in Extragalactic HII Regions and Starburst Galaxies
• A fundamental relation between mass, SFR and metallicity in local and high redshift galaxies
• The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• AMAZE. I. The evolution of the mass-metallicity relation at z>3
• Gas-regulation of galaxies: the evolution of the cosmic sSFR, the metallicity-mass-SFR relation and the stellar content of haloes
• The physics driving the cosmic star formation history
• Extragalactic Science, Cosmology and Galactic Archaeology with the Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS)
• The Impact of cold gas accretion above a mass floor on galaxy scaling relations
• Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs
• The Origin of the Galaxy Mass-Metallicity Relation and Implications for Galactic Outflows
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey. VII. The Redshift Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relation
• Galaxy Evolution in Cosmological Simulations with Outflows II: Metallicities and Gas Fractions
• A fundamental plane for field star-forming galaxies
• The Mass-Metallicity and the Fundamental Metallicity Relation revisited on a fully Te-based abundance scale for galaxies
• Clues to the Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Dependence on Star Formation Rate and Galaxy Size
• New calibrations for abundance determinations in HII regions
• New Strong Line Abundance Diagnostics for \HII Regions: Effects of $\kappa$-Distributed Electron Energies and New Atomic Data
• The star-formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics
• Chemical abundances in high-redshift galaxies: A powerful new emission line diagnostic
• Full spectrum fitting with photometry in pPXF: stellar population versus dynamical masses, non-parametric star formation history and metallicity for 3200 LEGA-C galaxies at redshift z~0.8
• The Origin and Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relationship for Galaxies: Results from Cosmological N-Body Simulations
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: The Impact of Diffuse Ionized Gas on Emission-line Ratios, Interpretation of Diagnostic Diagrams, and Gas Metallicity Measurements
• Dependence of Galaxy Quenching on Halo Mass and Distance from its Centre
• From haloes to Galaxies - I. The dynamics of the gas regulator model and the implied cosmic sSFR history
• The Emission Line Properties of Gravitationally-lensed 1.5 < z < 5 Galaxies
• Average Metallicity and Star Formation Rate of Lya Emitters Probed by a Triple Narrow-Band Survey
• The evolution of the mass-metallicity relation in galaxies of different morphological types
• A Critical Look at the Mass-Metallicity-SFR Relation in the Local Universe. I. An Improved Analysis Framework and Confounding Systematics
• Fundamental metallicity relation in CALIFA, SDSS-IV MaNGA and high-z galaxies
• From 'bathtub' galaxy evolution models to metallicity gradients
• Oxygen Gas Abundances at z~1.4: Implications for the Chemical Evolution History of Galaxies
• On the Elevation and Suppression of Star Formation within Galaxies
• Gas-phase Metallicity as a Diagnostic of the Drivers of Star-formation on Different Spatial Scales
• Inspiraling streams of enriched gas observed around a massive galaxy 11 billion years ago
• Gravitational Potential and Surface Density Drive Stellar Populations -- II. Star-Forming Galaxies
• The gas-phase metallicities of star-forming galaxies in aperture-matched SDSS samples follow potential rather than mass or average surface density
• The Gas-phase Metallicity Profiles of Star-forming Galaxies in the Modified Accretion Disk Framework
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at $z\sim 0.8$: Redshift Evolution and Parameter Dependency
• The SAMI galaxy survey: galaxy size can explain the offset between star-forming and passive galaxies in the mass-metallicity relationship
• The origin of the relation between metallicity and size in star-forming galaxies
• Environmental dependence of the mass-metallicity relation in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations
• Dissect two-halo galactic conformity effect for central galaxies: The dependence of star formation activities on the large-scale environment

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Rapid, out of equilibrium metal enrichment indicated by a flat mass-metallicity relation at z~6 from NIRCam grism spectroscopy
• The origin of the galaxy size-stellar metallicity relation: A semi-analytical perspective
• Both Stellar Mass and Gravitational Potential Shape the Gas-Phase Metallicity
• Dissecting the mass quenching in TNG50: Galaxy size determines the quenching mode
• Gravitational potential drives the concentration dependence of the stellar mass-halo mass relation