4.6 Article

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Variations in the N/O-O/H Relation Bias Metallicity Gradient Measurements

Journal

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 890, Issue 1, Pages -

Publisher

IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab6f06

Keywords

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Funding

  1. NSF CAREER Award [AST-1554877]
  2. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  3. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
  4. Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah
  5. Brazilian Participation Group
  6. Carnegie Institution for Science
  7. Carnegie Mellon University
  8. Chilean Participation Group
  9. French Participation Group
  10. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  11. Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
  12. Johns Hopkins University
  13. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU)/University of Tokyo
  14. Korean Participation Group
  15. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  16. Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)
  17. Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg)
  18. Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik (MPA Garching)
  19. Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE)
  20. National Astronomical Observatories of China
  21. New Mexico State University
  22. New York University
  23. University of Notre Dame
  24. Observatorio Nacional/MCTI
  25. Ohio State University
  26. Pennsylvania State University
  27. Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
  28. United Kingdom Participation Group
  29. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
  30. University of Arizona
  31. University of Colorado Boulder
  32. University of Oxford
  33. University of Portsmouth
  34. University of Utah
  35. University of Virginia
  36. University of Washington
  37. University of Wisconsin
  38. Vanderbilt University
  39. Yale University

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In this Letter we use strong line calibrations of the N/O and O/H in Mapping Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) galaxy survey spaxel data to explore the systematics introduced by variations in N/O on various strong-line metallicity diagnostics. We find radial variations in N/O at fixed O/H that correlate with total galaxy stellar mass and that can induce similar to 40% systematic uncertainties in oxygen abundance gradients when nitrogen-dependent abundance calibrations are used. Empirically, we find that departures from the expected N/O are associated with variation in the local star formation efficiency, as predicted by recent chemical evolution models for galaxies, but we cannot rule out other processes such as radial migration also playing a role.

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