J/ApJ/964/59 Gas-phase mass-metallicity relation for LEGA-C gal. (Lewis+, 2024) ================================================================================ The gas-phase mass-metallicity relation for massive galaxies at z~0.7 with the LEGA-C survey. Lewis Z.J., Andrews B.H., Bezanson R., Maseda M., Bell E.F., Dave R., D'Eugenio F., Franx M., Gallazzi A., de Graaff A., Kaushal Y., Nersesian A., Newman J.A., van der Wel A., Wu P.-F. =2024ApJ...964...59L ================================================================================ ADC_Keywords: Galaxies, spectra; Optical; Redshifts; Extinction; Abundances Keywords: Galaxy abundances ; Metallicity ; Galaxy evolution Abstract: The massive end of the gas-phase mass-metallicity relation (MZR) is a sensitive probe of active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback that is a crucial but highly uncertain component of galaxy evolution models. In this paper, we extend the z~0.7 MZR by ~0.5dex up to log(M*/M_{sun}_)~11.1. We use extremely deep VLT VIMOS spectra from the Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census (LEGA-C) survey to measure metallicities for 145 galaxies. The LEGA-C MZR matches the normalization of the z~0.8 DEEP2 MZR where they overlap, so we combine the two to create an MZR spanning from 9.3 to 11.1 log(M*/M_{sun}_). The LEGA-C+DEEP2 MZR at z~0.7 is offset to slightly lower metallicities (0.05-0.13 dex) than the z~0 MZR, but it otherwise mirrors the established power-law rise at low/intermediate stellar masses and asymptotic flattening at high stellar masses. We compare the LEGA-C+DEEP2 MZR to the MZR from two cosmological simulations (IllustrisTNG and SIMBA), which predict qualitatively different metallicity trends for high-mass galaxies. This comparison highlights that our extended MZR provides a crucial observational constraint for galaxy evolution models in a mass regime where the MZR is very sensitive to choices about the implementation of AGN feedback. Description: In this work, we take advantage of the ultra-deep spectra of a nearly mass-complete sample at 0.6~10^10^M_{sun}_) galaxies with existing Ultra-VISTA photometry at z=0.6-1. The spectra were obtained with 20hr of integration time each on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) with the VIsible MultiObject Spectrograph (VIMOS) and resulted in spectra over the wavelength range 5800-9500{AA} with an average S/N of 20{AA}^-1^. Throughout this paper, we assume the following cosmology: H0=70km/s/Mpc, {Omega}_M_=0.3, and {Omega}_{Lambda}_=0.7. File Summary: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FileName Lrecl Records Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe 80 . This file table1.dat 73 145 LEGA-C metallicities -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See also: II/373 : The fourth UltraVISTA data release (DR4) (Moneti+, 2019) J/ApJ/617/240 : Oxygen abundances in the GOODS-North field (Kobulnicky+, 2004) J/MNRAS/404/1639 : MILES base models & new line index system (Vazdekis+, 2010) J/A+A/544/A156 : UltraVISTA Catalogue Release DR1 (McCracken+, 2012) J/ApJ/765/140 : Stacked spectra of SDSS star forming galaxies (Andrews+, 2013) J/ApJ/777/18 : Stellar mass functions of galaxies to z=4 (Muzzin+, 2013) J/ApJS/206/8 : COSMOS/UltraVISTA Ks-selected catalogs v4.1 (Muzzin+, 2013) J/MNRAS/469/2121 : Mass-metallicity relations with CALIFA (Sanchez+ 2017) J/ApJS/239/27 : LEGA-C DR2: galaxies in the COSMOS field (Straatman+, 2018) J/MNRAS/484/3042 : The gas-phase mass-metallicity relation (Sanchez+, 2019) J/ApJ/913/103 : SED modelling of LEGA-C & HST massive gal. (de Graaff+, 2021) J/ApJ/923/11 : Stellar kinematics of LEGA-C galaxies (van Houdt+, 2021) J/ApJ/927/164 : Stellar population properties from LEGA-C DR2 (Borghi+, 2022) J/ApJ/928/126 : Dynamical masses of z~0.8 gal. from LEGA-C (Straatman+, 2022) J/ApJS/256/44 : LEGA-C DR3: spectra of 0.6