2016MNRAS.455.1156B -
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 455, 1156-1170 (2016/January-2)
Molecular gas as the driver of fundamental galactic relations.
BOTHWELL M.S., MAIOLINO R., PENG Y., CICONE C., GRIFFITH H. and WAGG J.
Abstract (from CDS):
There has been much recent work dedicated to exploring secondary correlations in the mass-metallicity relation, with significant dependence on both the SFR (SFR) and H i content being demonstrated. Previously, a paucity of molecular gas data (combined with sample selection bias) hampered the investigation of any such relation with molecular gas content. In this work, we assemble a sample of 221 galaxies from a variety of surveys in the redshift range 0 < z < 2, to explore the connection between molecular gas content and metallicity. We explore the effect of gas mass on the mass-metallicity relation, finding that the offset from the relation is negatively correlated against both molecular and total gas mass. We then employ a principle component analysis technique to explore secondary dependences in the mass-metallicity relation, finding that the secondary dependence with gas mass is significantly stronger than with SFR, and as such the underlying `fundamental metallicity relation' is between stellar mass, metallicity, and gas mass. In particular, the metallicity dependence on SFR is simply a byproduct of the dependence on the molecular gas content, via the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation. Finally, we note that our principle component analysis finds essentially no connection between gas-phase metallicity and the efficiency of star formation.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2015 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society (2015)
Journal keyword(s):
galaxies: abundances - galaxies: evolution - galaxies: formation - galaxies: statistics
Simbad objects:
5
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