Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 473, Issue 2, Pages 1868-1878Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx2452
Keywords
ISM: lines and bands; galaxies: abundances; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; galaxies: ISM; radio lines: galaxies
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AST-0607007, AST-1107390]
- Brinson Foundation
- Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT120100660]
- Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme [DP150101734]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
- University of Arizona
- Brazilian Participation Group
- Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Carnegie Mellon University
- University of Florida
- French Participation Group
- German Participation Group
- Harvard University
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
- Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group
- Johns Hopkins University
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
- Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
- New Mexico State University
- New York University
- Ohio State University
- Pennsylvania State University
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- Spanish Participation Group
- University of Tokyo
- University of Utah
- Vanderbilt University
- University of Virginia
- University of Washington
- Yale University
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this paper, we stack neutral atomic hydrogen (H-I) spectra for 9720 star-forming galaxies along the mass-metallicity relation. The sample is selected according to stellar mass (10(9) <= M-*/M-circle dot <= 10(11)) and redshift (0.02 <= z <= 0.05) from the overlap of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey. We confirm and quantify the strong anticorrelation between H-I mass and gas-phase metallicity at fixed stellar mass. Furthermore, we show for the first time that the relationship between gas content and metallicity is consistent between different metallicity estimators, contrary to the weaker trends found with star formation which are known to depend on the observational techniques used to derive oxygen abundances and star formation rates. When interpreted in the context of theoretical work, this result supports a scenario where galaxies exist in an evolving equilibrium between gas, metallicity and star formation. The fact that deviations from this equilibrium are most strongly correlated with gas mass suggests that the scatter in the mass-metallicity relation is primarily driven by fluctuations in gas accretion.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available