Measuring the mixing scale of the ISM within nearby spiral galaxies

Kreckel, Kathryn; Ho, I-Ting; Blanc, Guillermo A.; Glover, Simon C. O.; Groves, Brent; Rosolowsky, Erik; Bigiel, Frank; Boquien, M.; Chevance, Mélanie; Dale, Daniel A.; Deger, Sinan; Emsellem, Éric; Grasha, Kathryn; Kim, Jaeyeon; Klessen, Ralf S.; Kruijssen, J. M. Diederik; Lee, Janice; Leroy, Adam K.; Liu, Daizhong; McElroy, Rebecca; Meidt, Sharon E.; Pessa, Ismael; Sánchez‐Blázquez, P.; Sandström, Karin; Santoro, Francesco; Scheuermann, Fabian; Schinnerer, E.; Schruba, Andreas; Utomo, Dyas; Watkins, Elizabeth J.; Williams, Thomas G.

doi:10.1093/mnras/staa2743

Cited by 70 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…This indicates that in the latest billion years, the interstellar medium from which these clusters formed was well mixed. Our result is consistent with recent studies in other spiral galaxies, such as Kreckel et al (2020), who obtained a low abundance scatter (0.02-0.03 dex) in several nearby disc galaxies. This implies that the spatial metallicity distribution is highly correlated at scales <600 pc.…”

Section: High-precision Samplesupporting

confidence: 94%

The (im)possibility of strong chemical tagging

Casamiquela

Castro-Ginard

Anders

et al. 2021

A&A

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Context. The possibility of identifying co-natal stars that have dispersed into the Galactic disc based on chemistry alone is called strong chemical tagging. It has been debated for a long time whether this is indeed feasible; it holds the promise of reconstructing the detailed star formation history of a large fraction of stars in the Galactic disc. Aims. We investigate the feasibility of strong chemical tagging using known member stars of open clusters. Methods. We analysed the largest sample of cluster members that have been homogeneously characterised with high-resolution differential abundances for 16 different elements. We also investigated the possibility of finding the known clusters in the APOGEE DR16 red clump sample with 18 chemical species. For both purposes, we used a clustering algorithm and an unsupervised dimensionality reduction technique to blindly search for groups of stars in chemical space. Results. Even if the internal coherence of the stellar abundances in the same cluster is high, typically 0.03 dex, the overlap in the chemical signatures of the clusters is large. In the sample with the highest precision and no field stars, we only recover 9 out of the 31 analysed clusters at a 40% threshold of homogeneity and precision. This ratio slightly increases when we only use clusters with 7 or more members. In the APOGEE sample, field stars are present along with four populated clusters. In this case, only one of the open clusters was moderately recovered. Conclusions. In our best-case scenario, more than 70% of the groups of stars are in fact statistical groups that contain stars belonging to different real clusters. This indicates that the chances of recovering the majority of birth clusters dissolved in the field are slim, even with the most advanced clustering techniques. We show that different stellar birth sites can have overlapping chemical signatures, even when high-resolution abundances of many different nucleosynthesis channels are used. This is substantial evidence against the possibility of strong chemical tagging. However, we can hope to recover some particular birth clusters that stand out at the edges of the chemical distribution.

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Section: High-precision Samplesupporting

confidence: 94%

The (im)possibility of strong chemical tagging

Casamiquela

Castro-Ginard

Anders

et al. 2021

A&A

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“…Of these candidates, SAMI and MaNGA have the largest samples, but comparatively lower resolution and coverage. Quantitatively, the KT18 models predict that metallicities in galaxies should be correlated on scales of ∼0.1-1 kpc, and this prediction is consistent with the results for the eight PHANGS-MUSE galaxies analysed by Kreckel et al (2020). Unfortunately, the typical resolutions available in SAMI and MaNGA are insufficient to resolve such scales.…”

Section: Datasupporting

confidence: 71%

“…This model is based on stochastically forced diffusion, and predicts the multiscale statistics of metal fields that result from the competition between mixing and metal production. Despite its simplicity, this model establishes the principle that the statistics of the metal distribution encode a great deal of information about metal production and transport, and its predictions are at least qualitatively consistent with the distributions observed by Kreckel et al (2020). However, making use of this tool will require both more theoretical work and observational analysis of substantially larger samples.…”

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confidence: 89%

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Detection of metallicity correlations in 100 nearby galaxies

Krumholz

Wisnioski

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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In this paper, we analyse the statistics of the 2D gas-phase oxygen abundance distributions of 100 nearby galaxies drawn from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field spectroscopy Area survey. After removing the large-scale radial metallicity gradient, we compute the two-point correlation functions of the resulting metallicity fluctuation maps. We detect correlations in the majority of our targets, which we show are significantly in excess of what is expected due to beam-smearing, and are robust against the choice of metallicity diagnostic. We show that the correlation functions are generally well-fit by the predictions of a simple model for stochastic metal injection coupled with diffusion, and from the model we show that, after accounting for the effects of both beam smearing and noise, the galaxies in our sample have characteristic correlation lengths of ∼1 kpc. Correlation lengths increase with both stellar mass and star formation rate, but show no significant variation with Hubble type, barredness, or merging state. We also find no evidence for a theoretically predicted relationship between gas velocity dispersion and correlation length, though this may be due to the small dynamic range in gas velocity dispersion across our sample. Our results suggest that measurements of 2D metallicity correlation functions can be a powerful tool for studying galaxy evolution.

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“…show deviations of up to 0.2-0.3 dex from the radial gradients, and these variations increase at smaller scales [43].…”

Section: Pcmentioning

confidence: 91%

Large Metallicity Variations in the Galactic Interstellar Medium

Jenkins

Ledoux³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Metals in the neutral Interstellar Medium (ISM) of galaxies are crucial for the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, cosmic dust, molecules, and planets. However, understanding the metal abundances in the neutral ISM is complicated by the presence of cosmic dust. Large quantities of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase because they are incorporated into dust grains. This phenomenon is called dust depletion. Until recently, the metallicity of the neutral ISM in the vicinity of the Sun was assumed to be Solar. In this paper we directly measure the metallicity of the neutral ISM, by quantifying dust depletion without making as- sumptions on the gas metallicity, using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Very Large Telescope (VLT) spectra of 25 hot bright stars. We find that the dust-corrected metal- licity in the neutral ISM in our Galaxy is not always Solar, but shows large variations spreading over a factor of 10 and including many regions of low metallicity, down to ∼ 17% Solar and possibly below. Pristine gas infalling towards the Galactic disk in the form of intermediate and high-velocity clouds could cause the observed chemical inhomogeneities on scales of tens of pc. This has a profound impact for the chemical evolution of galaxies.

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Measuring the mixing scale of the ISM within nearby spiral galaxies

Cited by 70 publications

References 81 publications

The (im)possibility of strong chemical tagging

The (im)possibility of strong chemical tagging

Detection of metallicity correlations in 100 nearby galaxies

Large Metallicity Variations in the Galactic Interstellar Medium

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