Separate ways: The Mass-Metallicity Relation does not strongly correlate with Star Formation Rate in SDSS-IV MaNGA galaxies [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09893


We present the integrated stellar mass-metallicity relation (MZR) for more than 1700 galaxies included in the integral field area SDSS-IV MaNGA survey. The spatially resolved data allow us to determine the metallicity at the same physical scale (effective radius in arcsecs, $\mathrm{R_{eff}}$ ) using a heterogeneous set of ten abundance calibrators. Besides scale factors, the shape of the MZR is similar for all calibrators, consistent with those reported previously using single-fiber and integral field spectroscopy. We compare the residuals of this relation against the star formation rate (SFR) and specific SFR (sSFR). We do not find a strong secondary relation of the MZR with either SFR or the sSFR for any of the calibrators, in contrast with previous single-fiber spectroscopic studies. Our results agree with an scenario in which metal enrichment happens at local scales, with global outflows playing a secondary role in shaping the chemistry of galaxies and cold-gas inflows regulating the stellar formation.

Read this paper on arXiv…

J. Barrera-Ballesteros, S. Sanchez, T. Heckman, et. al.
Mon, 3 Jul 17
11/51

Comments: 10 pages, 9 Figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ