Evolution of the Stellar Mass–Metallicity Relation. II. Constraints on Galactic Outflows from the Mg Abundances of Quiescent Galaxies

Abstract

We present the stellar mass-[Fe/H] and mass-[Mg/H] relation of quiescent galaxies in two galaxy clusters at z ∼ 0.39 and z ∼ 0.54. We derive the age, [Fe/H], and [Mg/Fe] for each individual galaxy using a full-spectrum fitting technique. By comparing with the relations for z ∼ 0 SDSS galaxies, we confirm our previous finding that the mass-[Fe/H] relation evolves with redshift. The mass-[Fe/H] relation at higher redshift has lower normalization and possibly steeper slope. However, based on our sample, the mass-[Mg/H] relation does not evolve over the observed redshift range. We use a simple analytic chemical evolution model to constrain average outflow that these galaxies experience over their lifetime, via the calculation of mass-loading factor. We find that the average mass-loading factor η is a power-law function of galaxy stellar mass, η ∝ M −0.21±0.09 * . The measured mass-loading factors are consistent with the results of other observational methods for outflow measurements and with the predictions where outflow is caused by star formation feedback in turbulent disks.

The SAMI Galaxy Survey: global stellar populations on the size–mass plane

“…3 10.5 (McDermid et al 2015;Scott et al 2017;Barone et al 2018). Our results also agree with studies at z ∼ 0.5 that find little to no correlation between mass and [Mg/Fe], but a positive correlation between mass and age (Leethochawalit et al 2019;Choi et al 2014;Gallazzi et al 2014), and no correlation between galaxy age and size (e.g., Zanella et al 2016;Fagioli et al 2016). Drawing from the same LEGA-C parent sample, Wu et al (2018) find that at a fixed mass, smaller quiescent galaxies actually tend to be older using D n (4000), but they ignore the D n (4000) metallicity dependence.…”

L-GALAXIES 2020: The evolution of radial metallicity profiles and global metallicities in disc galaxies

“…We also find a much reduced evolution in the M * R for ETGs compared to star-forming galaxies in L-G 2020, in agreement with observations (e.g. Kriek et al 2019;Estrada-Carpenter et al 2019;Leethochawalit et al 2019;Lonoce et al 2020). At log 10 ( * / M ) = 11.0, * increases by only 0.04 dex from = 2 to 0 for ETGs in the modified model.…”

“…We note that, due to the incorporation of (a) delayed mass return from stars, and (b) non-zero direct enrichment of the CGM, the true mass-loading factors in L-G 2020 are no longer simply equivalent to the disc parameter. These mass-loading factors are also in good qualitative agreement with those calculated for observed quiescent galaxies at ∼ 0.39 − 0.54 by Leethochawalit et al (2019).…”

[α/Fe] traced by H II regions from the CALIFA survey

“…We intended to reproduce the bulk observed distributions shown in Fig. 1 using a reasonable set of input parameters: (i) one model uses the exp functional form to reproduce SFHs of earlier-type galaxies (or the centre of early spirals) and the remaining models a lin-exp one that matches better with the SFHs of late-type galaxies (following López Fernández et al 2018;García-Benito et al 2019); (ii) a different value of τ * was adopted for each of the five models, spanning from 0.55 to 1.4 Gyr, to reproduce the range of observed A ,L ; (iii) four different values for η were adopted, ranging between 3 and 11 and covering the expected values for galaxies of different morphologies and stellar masses, based on the relation between η and M * from Leethochawalit et al (2019) and the morphology-mass relation in the CALIFA sample (e.g. Lacerda et al 2020); finally, (iv) we adopted four different values of t dep to reproduce the dependence of this parameter on the morphological type described by Colombo et al (2018), using the values tabulated by Sánchez et al (2021).…”

“…The It is worth noting that we did not fit or adjust the input parameters of the model to reproduce the observed abundance patterns: η and τ dep were extracted from the literature (Leethochawalit et al 2019;Colombo et al 2018;Sánchez et al 2021), and the shape of the SFHs and τ * were selected to reproduce just the average A ,L . Based on this modelling, massive and earlier-type galaxies present stronger [O/Fe] enhancement, covering a narrower range of values and with a better defined trend of this parameter with [Fe/H] as a consequence of shorter and sharper SFHs, a low diversity in the SFH, lower star formation efficiency (SFE) values, and a better ability to retain metals.…”