The Luminosity-Metallicity relation in the local universe from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey

Abstract

We investigate the Luminosity-Metallicity (L-Z) relation in the local universe (z < 0.15) using spectra of 6387 star-forming galaxies extracted from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. This sample is by far the largest to date used to perform such a study. We distinguish star-forming galaxies from AGNs using "standard" diagnostic diagrams to build a homogeneous sample of starburst galaxies for the L-Z study. We propose new diagnostic diagrams using "blue" emission lines ([OII]3727, [OIII]5007 and Hbeta) only to discriminate starbursts from AGNs in intermediate-redshift (z > 0.3) galaxies. Oxygen-to-hydrogen (O/H) abundance ratios are estimated using the "strong-line" method, which relates the strength of bright emission lines (parameters R23 and O32) to O/H. We confirm the existence of the luminosity-metallicity relation over a large range of abundances (~ 2 dex) and luminosities (~ 9 magnitudes). We find a linear relation between the gas-phase oxygen abundance and both the "raw" and extinction-corrected absolute B-band magnitude with a rms of 0.27. A similar relation, with nearly the same scatter, is found in the R band. This relation is in good agreement with the one derived by Melbourne & Salzer (2002) using the KISS data. However, our L-Z relation is much steeper than previous determinations using samples of "normal" irregular and spiral galaxies. This difference seems to be primarily due to the choice of the galaxy sample used to investigate the L-Z relation rather than any systematic error affecting the O/H determination. We anticipate that this luminosity-metallicity relation will be used as the local "reference" for future studies of the evolution with cosmic time of fundamental galaxy scaling relations. (Abridged version).

arXiv comment11 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (34)

• The Host Galaxies of AGN
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Spectra and redshifts
• Dwarf Galaxies of the Local Group
• High Redshift Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field. Color Selection and Star Formation History to z=4
• Semi-Analytic Modelling of Galaxy Formation: The Local Universe
• The Rest Frame Optical Spectra of Lyman Break Galaxies: Star Formation, Extinction, Abundances, and Kinematics
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: The environmental dependence of galaxy star formation rates near clusters
• Spectroscopy of Outlying H II Regions in Spiral Galaxies: Abundances and Radial Gradients
• The Composition Gradient in M101 Revisited. II. Electron Temperatures and Implications for the Nebular Abundance Scale
• The Metallicity-Luminosity Relation, Effective Yields, and Metal Loss in Spiral and Irregular Galaxies
• On Measuring Chemical Abundances in Distant Galaxies Using Global Emission Line Spectra
• Infared Observations of Nebular Emission Lines from Galaxies at z = 3
• On the oxygen abundance determination in HII regions: High - metallicity regions
• Spectrophotometry of nearby field galaxies: the data
• Synthetic spectra of H Balmer and HeI absorption lines. II: Evolutionary synthesis models for starburst and post-starburst galaxies
• Oxygen Abundances in Low Surface Brightness Disk Galaxies
• H-alpha Spectroscopy of Galaxies at z>2: Kinematics and Star Formation
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey X: Number Density and Luminosity Function of Field E/S0 Galaxies at z < 1
• The matallicities of star-forming galaxies at intermediate redshifts 0.47 < z < 0.92
• Chemical Properties of Star-Forming Emission Line Galaxies at z=0.1 - 0.5
• Oxygen abundances in dwarf irregular galaxies and the metallicity - luminosity relationship
• New diagnostic methods for emission-line galaxies in deep surveys
• Luminous compact galaxies at intermediate redshifts: progenitors of bulges of massive spirals ?
• The evolution of the Tully-Fisher relation of spiral galaxies
• Chemical abundances in an UV-selected sample of galaxies
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey VII: The Metallicity of Field Galaxies at 0.26<z<0.82 and the Evolution of the Luminosity-Metallicity Relation
• Metal Abundances of KISS Galaxies. I. Coarse Metal Abundances and the Metallicity-Luminosity Relation
• On the Assembly History of Early-Type Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North
• The Tully-Fisher relation of cluster spirals at z = 0.83
• The evolution of emission lines in HII galaxies
• Evidence for chemical evolution in the spectra of high redshift galaxies
• Chemical evolution of starburst galaxies: How does star formation proceed?
• Physical properties of two low-luminosity z ~ 1.9 galaxies behind the lensing cluster AC 114
• New abundance measurements in UKS 1927-177, a very metal-poor galaxy in the Local Group

Cited by in corpus (125)

• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• Metallicity Calibrations and the Mass-Metallicity Relation for Star-Forming Galaxies
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• De Re Metallica: The cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies
• Optical Spectroscopy and Nebular Oxygen Abundances of the Spitzer/SINGS Galaxies
• The Galaxy Population Hosting Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Gas metallicity diagnostics in star-forming galaxies
• Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies III. How to distinguish AGN hosts
• Oxygen and nitrogen abundances in nearby galaxies. Correlations between oxygen abundance and macroscopic properties
• The impact of the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio on ionized nebulae diagnostics based on [NII] emission lines
• Accreting SMBHs in the COSMOS field and the connection to their host galaxies
• Velocity-Metallicity Correlation for high-z DLA Galaxies: Evidence for a Mass-Metallicity Relation?
• The Rest-frame Optical Spectra of SCUBA Galaxies
• Aperture effects on Star Formation Rate, Metallicity and Reddening
• The Mass-Metallicity and Luminosity-Metallicity Relation from DEEP2 at z ~ 0.8
• A New Diagnostic of Active Galactic Nuclei: Revealing Highly-Absorbed Systems at Redshift>0.3
• The K20 survey. VII. The spectroscopic catalogue: spectral properties and evolution of the galaxy population
• Feedback and metal enrichment in cosmological SPH simulations I. A model for chemical enrichment
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. I. Type Ibn (SN 2006jc-like) events
• An extreme [OIII] emitter at $z=3.2$: a low metallicity Lyman continuum source
• The Molecular ISM of Dwarf Galaxies on Kiloparsec Scales: A New Survey for CO in Northern, IRAS-detected Dwarf Galaxies
• The Host Galaxy of GRB 031203: Implications of its low metallicity, low redshift, and starburst nature
• Evidence for Solar Metallicities in Massive Star-forming Galaxies at z>~2
• Predictions for the CO emission of galaxies from a coupled simulation of galaxy formation and photon dominated regions
• MASSIV: Mass Assembly Survey with SINFONI in VVDS. III. Evidence for positive metallicity gradients in z~1.2 star-forming galaxies
• The Role of Environment in the Mass-Metallicity Relation
• PPAK Wide-field Integral Field Spectroscopy of NGC 628: II. Emission line abundance analysis
• A Spectroscopic Survey of X-ray Selected AGN in the Northern XMM-XXL Field
• The cosmic evolution of oxygen and nitrogen abundances in star-forming galaxies over the past 10 Gyrs
• Metal Abundances of KISS Galaxies III. Nebular Abundances for Fourteen Galaxies and the Luminosity-Metallicity Relationship for HII Galaxies
• AEGIS: Demographics of X-ray and Optically Selected AGNs
• Spectroscopic study of blue compact galaxies V. oxygen abundance and the metallicity-luminosity relation
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey XI. Constraining the low-mass end of the stellar mass - star formation rate relation at $z<1$
• 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
• Metal Abundances of KISS Galaxies. IV. Galaxian Luminosity-Metallicity Relations in the Optical and Near-IR
• Neon and Argon optical emission lines in ionized gaseous nebulae: Implications and applications
• An investigation of the luminosity-metallicity relation for a large sample of low-metallicity emission-line galaxies
• Gas and dust properties in the afterglow spectra of GRB 050730
• The environmental dependence of the chemical properties of star-forming galaxies
• Oxygen Abundances and Chemical Evolution in Low Surface Brightness Galaxies
• On the maximum value of the cosmic abundance of oxygen and the oxygen yield
• The dust obscuration bias in Damped Lyman alpha systems
• Discovery of Strongly Inverted Metallicity Gradients in Dwarf Galaxies at $z$$\sim$2
• Stellar populations in the centres of brightest cluster galaxies
• The [OIII] emission line luminosity function of optically selected type-2 AGN from zCOSMOS
• The Wolf-Rayet features and mass-metallicity relation of long-duration gamma-ray burst host galaxies
• Obscured AGN at z~1 from the zCOSMOS-Bright Survey I. Selection and Optical Properties of a [Ne v]-selected sample
• Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of 0.4<z<1.0 CFRS Galaxies: Oxygen Abundances, SFRs and Dust
• Clues for the origin of the fundamental metallicity relations. I: The hierarchical building up of the structure
• Environmental dependence of AGN activity in the supercluster A901/2
• Habitable Zones in the Universe
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Discovery of Luminous, Metal-poor, Sta r-forming Galaxies at Redshifts z~0.7
• Testing Diagnostics of Nuclear Activity and Star Formation in Galaxies at z>1
• SDSS 0809+1729: Connections Between Extremely Metal Poor Galaxies and Gamma Ray Burst Hosts
• The dependence of oxygen and nitrogen abundances on stellar mass from the CALIFA survey
• Luminosity-Metallicity Relations for Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies in the Optical and Near-Infrared
• Chemical Properties of Star Forming Dwarf Galaxies
• Stellar Mass--Gas-phase Metallicity Relation at $0.5\le z\le 0.7$: A Power Law with Increasing Scatter toward the Low-mass Regime
• Physical properties of galaxies and their evolution in the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey. II. Extending the mass-metallicity relation to the range z=0.89-1.24
• Characterization of star-forming dwarf galaxies at 0.1 $\lesssim z\lesssim$ 0.9 in VUDS: Probing the low-mass end of the mass-metallicity relation
• The redshift evolution of oxygen and nitrogen abundances in emission-line SDSS galaxies
• The Dependence of Star Formation Activity on Stellar Mass Surface Density and Sersic Index in zCOSMOS Galaxies at 0.5<z<0.9 Compared with SDSS Galaxies at 0.04<z<0.08
• Star Formation Activity in CLASH Brightest Cluster Galaxies
• The [OII]/Halpha ratio of emission line galaxies in the 2dF redshift survey
• The XMM large scale structure survey: optical vs. X-ray classifications of active galactic nuclei and the unified scheme
• Understanding chemical evolution in resolved galaxies -- I The local star fraction-metallicity relation
• The metallicity properties of zCOSMOS galaxies at 0.2<z<0.8
• The optical spectra of 24 micron galaxies in the COSMOS field: I. Spitzer/MIPS bright sources in the zCOSMOS-bright 10k catalogue
• The evolution of galaxy metallicity scaling relations in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations
• Emission-lines calibrations of the Star Formation Rate from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A probabilistic approach to emission-line galaxy classification
• Metal Abundances of KISS Galaxies. VI. New Metallicity Relations for the KISS Sample of Star-Forming Galaxies
• Extreme emission-line galaxies out to z$\sim$1 in zCOSMOS. I. Sample and characterization of global properties
• Emission Line Abundances of Absorption Selected Galaxies at z<0.5
• Chemical abundances in spiral and irregular galaxies. O and N abundances derived from global emission--line spectra
• Spectrophotometric properties of galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z ~ 0.2--1.0) II. The Luminosity -- Metallicity relation
• Spectrophotometric properties of galaxies at intermediate redshifts (z ~ 0.2--1.0) I. Sample description, photometric properties and spectral measurements
• Galaxy emission line classification using 3D line ratio diagrams
• Wide-Field Chandra X-Ray Observations of AGN in Abell 85 & Abell 754
• Herschel Spectroscopic Observations of LITTLE THINGS Dwarf Galaxies
• Disentangling the metallicity and star formation history of HII galaxies through tailor-made models
• Properties and environment of Radio Emitting Galaxies in the VLA-zCOSMOS survey
• Interactions, star formation and extended nebulae in SDSS type 2 quasars at 0.3<~ z <~ 0.6
• Classification and analysis of emission-line galaxies using mean field independent component analysis
• The space density of Compton-thick AGN at z~0.8 in the zCOSMOS-Bright Survey
• Central galaxy growth and feedback in the most massive nearby cool core cluster
• Chemical Evolution of Dwarf Irregular and Blue Compact Galaxies
• The UV-upturn in brightest cluster galaxies
• NGC922 - A new drop-through ring galaxy
• Study of star-forming galaxies in SDSS up to redshift 0.4: I. Metallicity evolution
• The environments and clustering properties of 2dFGRS-selected starburst galaxies
• Spatially resolved spectroscopy and chemical history of star-forming galaxies in the Hercules cluster: the effects of the environment
• Chemical abundances in the nuclear region of nearby galaxies from the Palomar Survey
• Optical and JWST Mid-IR Emission Line Diagnostics for Simultaneous IMBH and Stellar Excitation in z~0 Dwarf Galaxies
• The metallicities of luminous, massive field galaxies at intermediate redshifts
• Kinematics and physical properties of Southern interacting galaxies: the minor merger AM 2306-721
• First survey of Wolf-Rayet star populations over the full extension of nearby galaxies observed with CALIFA
• Spatially-resolved HST Grism Spectroscopy of a Lensed Emission Line Galaxy at z~1
• Investigating the relationship between AGN activity and stellar mass in zCOSMOS galaxies at 0<z<1 using emission line diagnostic diagrams
• Photometric Selection of Emission Line Galaxies, Clustering Analysis and a Search for the ISW effect
• The chemical case for no winds in dwarf irregular galaxies
• Systematic Survey for [OII], [OIII], and H$\alpha$ Blobs at $z=0.1-1.5$: The Implication for Evolution of Galactic-Scale Outflow
• Simulating the Mass-Metallicity Relation from z=1
• Spectral classification of emission-line galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. A supplementary diagnostic for AGNs using the Dn(4000) index
• MUSE-inspired view of the quasar Q2059-360, its Lyman alpha blob, and its neighborhood
• Long-slit Spectroscopy of Edge-on Low Surface Brightness Galaxies
• The Diagnostics and Possible Evolution in Active Galactic Nuclei Associated With Starburst Galaxies
• Metallicity and X-ray luminosity variations in NGC 922
• Rest-frame UV and optical emission line diagnostics of ionised gas properties: a test case in a star-forming knot of a lensed galaxy at z~1.7
• A Novel Method to Identify AGNs Based on Emission Line Excess and the Nature of Low-luminosity AGNs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: II - Nature of Low-luminosity AGNs
• Galaxy evolution across the optical emission-line diagnostic diagrams?
• MOSFIRE and LDSS3 Spectroscopy for an [OII] Blob at z=1.18: Gas Outflow and Energy Source
• Classifying Radio Emitters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Spectroscopy and Diagnostics
• A Novel Method to Identify AGNs Based on Emission Line Excess and the Nature of Low-luminosity AGNs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: I - A Novel Method
• Hα Dots: Direct-Method Metal Abundances of Low-Luminosity Star-Forming Systems
• Ionizing stellar population in the disc of NGC 3310 - II. The Wolf-Rayet population
• High-resolution observations of SDSS J080800.99+483807.7 in the optical and radio domains. A possible example of jet-triggered star formation
• Star formation rates and chemical abundances of emission line galaxies in intermediate-redshift clusters
• The WHIQII Survey: Metallicities and Spectroscopic Properties of Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies
• Extended X-ray emission from non-thermal sources in the COSMOS field: A detailed study of a large radio galaxy at z=1.168
• The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Galaxy Evolution at 0.25 < z < 0.75 Using The Second Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS-2)
• F-VIPGI: a new adapted version of VIPGI for FORS2 spectroscopy. Application to a sample of 16 X-ray selected galaxy clusters at 0.6 < z < 1.2
• Integral field spectroscopy with SINFONI of VVDS galaxies. II. The mass-metallicity relation at 1.2 < z < 1.6
• MASSIV: Mass Assembly Survey with SINFONI in VVDS. VI. Metallicity-related fundamental relations in star-forming galaxies at $1<z<2$
• Seeing through the dust: Unraveling near-infrared variability in type 2 active galactic nuclei