A fundamental plane for field star-forming galaxies

Abstract

Context. Star formation rate (SFR), metallicity, and stellar mass are among the most important parameters of star-forming (SF) galaxies characterizing their formation and evolution. They are known to be related to each other both at low and high redshift in the mass-metallicity, mass-SFR, and metallicity-SFR relations. Aims. We demonstrate the existence of a plane in a 3D parameter space defined by the axes SFR [log (SFR)(M yr −1 )], gas metallicity [12 + log (O/H)], and stellar mass [log (M star /M )] of SF galaxies. Methods. We used SF galaxies from the "main galaxy sample" of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-Data Release 7 (SDSS-DR7) in the redshift range 0.04 < z < 0.1 and r-magnitudes between 14.5 and 17.77. Metallicities, SFRs, and stellar masses were taken from the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics-John Hopkins University (MPA-JHU) emission-line analysis database. Results. From a final sample of 32 575 galaxies, we find for the first time a fundamental plane for field galaxies relating the SFR, gas metallicity, and stellar mass for SF galaxies in the local universe. One of the applications of this plane would be to estimate stellar masses from SFR and metallicity. High redshift data from the literature at redshift ∼0.85, 2.2, and 3.5, do not show evidence of evolution in this fundamental plane.

A relationship between specific star formation rate and metallicity gradient within z ∼ 1 galaxies from KMOS-HiZELS

“…This picture is also in agreement with the observed fundamental metallicity relation (FMR; Lara-López et al 2010;Mannucci et al 2010;Stott et al 2013b) in which galaxies at a fixed stellar mass are found to be more metal poor with increasing SFR. In fact, as measurements of the FMR tend to use spectroscopy of the bright inner regions of the galaxy due to the limited size of spectroscopic slits and fibres (e.g.…”

Star formation sustained by gas accretion

“…The relationship presents a significant scatter that has been recently found to be associated with the present SFR in the galaxy Lara-López et al 2010;Yates et al 2012;Pérez-Montero et al 2013;Andrews and Martini 2013;Zahid et al 2013). Specifically, for galaxies with the same stellar mass, the metallicity decreases as the current SFR increases.…”

On the universality of luminosity–metallicity and mass–metallicity relations for compact star-forming galaxies at redshifts 0 < z < 3

“…It was argued in some recent papers (e.g. Manucci et al 2010;Lara-López et al 2010;Hunt et al 2012;Andrews & Martini 2013) that star-forming galaxies with higher SFRs are systematically more metal-poor on the stellar massmetallicity diagrams. In particular, Manucci et al (2010) proposed a fundamental metallicity relation (FMR) between stellar mass, gas-phase metallicity and star formation rate.…”