The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z ~ 1-2 and Its Dependence on the Star Formation Rate

Authors

• Alaina Henry, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Marc Rafelski, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Ben Sunnquist, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Norbert Pirzkal, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Camilla Pacifici, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Hakim Atek, Sorbonne Université
• Micaela Bagley, The University of Texas at Austin
• Ivano Baronchelli, Università degli Studi di Padova
• Guillermo Barro, University of the PacificFollow
• Andrew J. Bunker, University of Oxford
• James Colbert, California Institute of Technology
• Y. Sophia Dai, Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy
• Bruce G. Elmegreen, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
• Debra Meloy Elmegreen, Vassar College
• Steven Finkelstein, The University of Texas at Austin
• Dale Kocevski, Colby College
• Anton Koekemoer, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Matthew Malkan, University of California, Los Angeles
• Crystal L. Martin, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Vihang Mehta, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• Anthony Pahl, University of California, Los Angeles
• Casey Papovich, Texas A&M University

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Astrophysical Journal

Department

Physics

ISSN

15384357

Volume

919

Issue

2

DOI

10.3847/1538-4357/ac1105

First Page

1

Last Page

29

Publication Date

10-5-2021

Abstract

We present a new measurement of the gas-phase mass-metallicity relation (MZR) and its dependence on star formation rates (SFRs) at 1.3 < z < 2.3. Our sample comprises 1056 galaxies with a mean redshift of z = 1.9, identified from the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) grism spectroscopy in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Survey and the WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel Survey. This sample is four times larger than previous metallicity surveys at z ~ 2 and reaches an order of magnitude lower in stellar mass (108 M o?). Using stacked spectra, we find that the MZR evolves by 0.3 dex relative to z ~ 0.1. Additionally, we identify a subset of 49 galaxies with high signal-to-noise (S/N) spectra and redshifts between 1.3 < z < 1.5, where Ha emission is observed along with [O iii] and [O ii]. With accurate measurements of SFR in these objects, we confirm the existence of a mass-metallicity-SFR (M-Z-SFR) relation at high redshifts. These galaxies show systematic differences from the local M-Z-SFR relation, which vary depending on the adopted measurement of the local relation. However, it remains difficult to ascertain whether these differences could be due to redshift evolution, as the local M-Z-SFR relation is poorly constrained at the masses and SFRs of our sample. Lastly, we reproduced our sample selection in the IllustrisTNG hydrodynamical simulation, demonstrating that our line flux limit lowers the normalization of the simulated MZR by 0.2 dex. We show that the M-Z-SFR relation in IllustrisTNG has an SFR dependence that is too steep by a factor of around 3.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Henry, Alaina; Rafelski, Marc; Sunnquist, Ben; Pirzkal, Norbert; Pacifici, Camilla; Atek, Hakim; Bagley, Micaela; Baronchelli, Ivano; Barro, Guillermo; Bunker, Andrew J.; Colbert, James; Dai, Y. Sophia; Elmegreen, Bruce G.; Elmegreen, Debra Meloy; Finkelstein, Steven; Kocevski, Dale; Koekemoer, Anton; Malkan, Matthew; Martin, Crystal L.; Mehta, Vihang; Pahl, Anthony; and Papovich, Casey, "The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z ~ 1-2 and Its Dependence on the Star Formation Rate" (2021). Pacific Faculty Work. 291.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/all-faculty/291