The role of inner HI mass in regulating the scatter of the mass-metallicity relation [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2205.08331


We use 789 (596 HI detections) disk-like, star-forming galaxies from HI follow-up observations for the SDSS-IV MaNGA survey to study the possible role of inner HI gas in causing secondary dependences in the mass–gas phase metallicity relation. We use the gas-phase metallicity derived at the effective radius of galaxies. We derive the inner HI mass within the optical radius, but also use the total HI mass and SFR for a comparison. We confirm the anti-correlation between total HI mass and gas-phase metallicity at a fixed stellar mass, but the anti-correlation is significantly strengthened when the total HI mass is replaced by the inner HI mass. Introducing a secondary relation with the inner HI mass can produce a small but noticeable decrease (16%) in the scatter of MZR, in contrast to the negligible effect with the SFR. The correlation with the inner HI mass is robust when using different diagnostics of the metallicity while the correlation with SFR is not. The correlation with the inner HI mass becomes much weaker when the gas-phase metallicity is derived in the central region instead of at the effective radius. These results support the idea that the scatter in the mass-metallicity relation is regulated by gas accretion but not directly by SFR, and stress the importance of deriving gas mass and metallicity from roughly the same region. The new relation between inner HI mass and gas-phase metallicity provides new constraints to chemical and galaxy evolution models.

Read this paper on arXiv…

X. Chen, J. Wang and X. Kong
Wed, 18 May 22
47/66

Comments: 14 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ