J/ApJ/964/94 Gas-phase metallicity gradients in GOODS galaxies (Cheng+, 2024)
Exploring the gas-phase metallicity gradients of star-forming galaxies at
cosmic noon.
Cheng Y., Giavalisco M., Simons R.C., Ji Z., Stroupe D., Cleri N.J.
<Astrophys. J., 964, 94 (2024)>
=2024ApJ...964...94C 2024ApJ...964...94C
ADC_Keywords: Energy distributions; Galaxies, photometry; Galaxies, spectra;
Redshifts; Abundances
Keywords: Galaxy evolution ; Galaxy abundances
Abstract:
We explore the relationships between the [O/H] gas-phase metallicity
radial gradients and multiple galaxy properties for 238 star-forming
galaxies at 0.6<z<2.6 selected from the CANDELS Lyα Emission at
Reionization survey with stellar mass 8.5<logM*/M☉<10.5. The
gradients cover the range from -0.11 to 0.22dex/kpc, with the median
value close to 0. We reconstruct the nonparametric star formation
histories (SFHs) of the galaxies with spectral energy distribution
modeling using Prospector with more than 40 photometric bands from the
Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, and ground-based facilities. In
general, we find weak or no correlations between the metallicity
gradients and most galaxy properties, including the mass-weighted age,
recent star formation rate, dust attenuation, and morphology as
quantified by both parametric and nonparametric diagnostics. We find a
significant but moderate correlation between the gradients and the
"evolutionary time," a temporal metric that characterizes the
evolutionary status of a galaxy, with flatter gradients observed in
more evolved galaxies. Also, there is evidence that galaxies with
multiple star formation episodes in their SFHs tend to develop more
negative gas-phase metallicity gradients (higher [O/H] at the center).
We conclude that gas kinematics, e.g., radial inflows and outflows, is
likely an important process in setting the gas-phase metallicity
gradients, in addition to the evolution of the SFH radial profile.
Since the gradients are largely independent of the galaxies' physical
properties and only weakly dependent on their SFH, it would appear
that the timescale of the gas kinematics is significantly shorter than
the evolution of star formation.
Description:
In this paper, we use the measures of gas-phase metallicity gradients
of high-z star-forming galaxies in the GOODS-S and GOODS-N fields made
by Simons+ (2021, J/ApJ/923/203; CLEAR) and expand the analysis of
their correlation with the SFH of the galaxies.
The data were obtained from deep NIR HST slitless spectroscopy as a
part of the CLEAR survey. The footprint of this survey covers
12 pointings in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic
Legacy Survey (CANDELS) GOODS-N and GOODS-S fields, providing deep
HST/WFC3 G102 grism spectroscopy and companion HST/WFC3 F105W direct
imaging. All publicly available HST/WFC3 G102 and G141 grism
observations that overlap with the CLEAR footprint are also included
to extend the spectral coverage and maximize the depth.
The sample of galaxies was selected based on high-S/N line ratio
criteria (≥5σ integrated detection in at least two of the
strong lines in [OIII]4958,5007, [OII]3727, and Hβ) and for
having a radial extent that allowed spatially resolved emission line
maps.
We have modeled the SEDs of the galaxies in our sample and
reconstructed their star formation history (SFH) in nonparametric form
with the package Prospector using the extended CANDELS photometric
catalogs in the GOODS fields (Giavalisco+ 2004, II/261). These include
over 40 photometric bands from both ground-based and space-borne
instruments, ranging from the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) portion of
the spectrum to the mid-infrared (MIR) one. See Section 2.2.
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 71 119 The galaxy properties and SFH characteristics
derived from spectral energy distribution (SED)
fittings
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
B/hst : HST Archived Exposures Catalog (STScI, 2007)
II/261 : GOODS initial results (Giavalisco+, 2004)
J/AJ/128/163 : Galaxy morphological classification (Lotz+, 2004)
J/ApJ/653/1027 : TKRS/GOODS-N Field galaxies (Weiner+, 2006)
J/ApJ/706/1364 : SINS survey of high-z galaxies (Forster Schreiber+, 2009)
J/ApJS/203/24 : Structural param. of gal. in CANDELS (van der Wel+, 2012)
J/ApJS/207/24 : GOODS-S CANDELS multiwavelength catalog (Guo+, 2013)
J/ApJS/214/24 : 3D-HST+CANDELS catalog (Skelton+, 2014)
J/ApJS/225/27 : 3D-HST Survey: grism sp. master catalog (Momcheva+, 2016)
J/A+A/587/A70 : CALIFA face-on spiral gal. oxygen (Sanchez-Menguiano+, 2016)
J/ApJ/830/14 : SIGMA: Keck spectra of z∼2 gal. in CANDELS (Simons+, 2016)
J/ApJ/827/74 : [NII]/Hα ratio in gal. with KMOS3D (Wuyts+, 2016)
J/MNRAS/478/4293 : 0.1<z<0.8 gal. gas-phase metallicity grad. (Carton+, 2018)
J/ApJS/243/22 : CANDELS/SHARDS multiλ cat. in GOODS-N (Barro+, 2019)
J/A+A/625/A114 : Star-forming gal. over 0.35<z<2.25 (Jimenez-Andrade+, 2019)
J/ApJ/887/80 : Gas phase oxygen abundances for HII regions (Kreckel+, 2019)
J/MNRAS/492/821 : KLEVER Survey: metallicity maps and gradients (Curti+, 2020)
J/ApJ/890/7 : Environment of gal. in the 5 CANDELS fields (Chartab+, 2020)
J/ApJ/900/183 : HST grism sp. of strong-lensing gal. clusters (Wang+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/500/4229 : Star-forming galaxies at z~=0.6-1.8 (Gillman+, 2021)
J/A+A/649/A22 : ASTRODEEP-GS43 catalogue (Merlin+, 2021)
J/ApJ/923/203 : CLEAR: HST grism obs. of CANDELS gal. (Simons+, 2021)
J/A+A/672/A27 : Galaxies outside clusters (Bilek+, 2023)
J/ApJS/275/17 : UVCANDELS: zphot & galaxy physical param. (Mehta+, 2024)
http://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/clear : CLEAR on MAST
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 6 A6 --- Field Field identifier (GOODSN or GOODSS)
8- 12 I5 --- ID [7717/27421] Identifier within Field (1)
14- 17 F4.2 --- z [0.7/2.5] Redshift
19- 24 F6.3 [Msun] logM [8.3/11.4] Log galaxy mass
26- 31 F6.3 kpc-1 Zslope [-0.11/0.16] Metallicity gradient,
dex/kpc (2)
33- 38 F6.3 Msun/yr rSFR [0.37/70] Most recent bin Star Formation
Rate
40- 45 F6.3 Gyr tmw [0.79/12.5] Mass-weighted age
47- 52 F6.3 Gyr tTot [0.8/10.6] Total time length of
star-formation (3)
54- 58 F5.3 Gyr t1 [0.5/6.7] Time length of late period of
star formation (3)
60- 64 F5.3 Gyr t2 [0.3/9.1] Time length of early period of
star formation (3)
66- 71 F6.3 --- Skewness [-7.1/7.5] Third standardized moment of
stellar ages (3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note (1): These are matched to the CANDELS photometric catalog.
Note (2): Taken from Simons+ 2021, J/ApJ/923/203
Note (3): The four parameters proposed by Ji & Giavalisco (2022ApJ...935..120J 2022ApJ...935..120J),
designed to provide quantitative information on the overall shape of
the SFH:
1. τtot: the total time of star formation (0<t<tobs).
2. τ1: the length of the late period of star formation (tmw<t<tobs),
referred to as τSF in Ji & Giavalisco (2022).
3. τ2: the length of the early period of star formation (0<t<tmw),
referred to as τQ in Ji & Giavalisco (2022).
4. Skewness: the third standardized moment of stellar ages
where tobs refers to the age of the Universe at the observed redshift.
See Section 4.1.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History:
From electronic version of the journal
License: CC-BY-4.0
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 02-Jul-2026