Issue |
A&A
Volume 582, October 2015
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A46 | |
Number of page(s) | 20 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201525924 | |
Published online | 05 October 2015 |
Abundance patterns in early-type galaxies: is there a “knee” in the [Fe/H] vs. [α/Fe] relation?
1
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP),
An der Sternwarte 16,
14482
Potsdam,
Germany
2
Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciẽncias Atmosféricas,
Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do
Matão 1226, 05508-090
São Paulo,
Brasil
3
INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo Enrico Fermi
5, 50125
Firenze,
Italy
4
Dark Cosmology Center, University of Copenhagen, Niels Bohr
Institute, Juliane Maries Vej
30, 2100
Copenhagen,
Denmark
5
Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica (CRyA),
Morelia, 58089
Michoacan,
Mexico
6
UPMC-CNRS, UMR7095, Institut d’Astrophysique de
Paris, 75014
Paris,
France
Received: 18 February 2015
Accepted: 18 August 2015
Early-type galaxies (ETGs) are known to be enhanced in α elements, in accordance with their old ages and short formation timescales. In this contribution we aim to resolve the enrichment histories of ETGs. This means we study the abundance of Fe ([Fe/H]) and the α-element groups ([α/Fe]) separately for stars older than 9.5 Gyr ([Fe/H]o, [α/Fe]o) and for stars between 1.5 and 9.5 Gyr ([Fe/H]i, [α/Fe]i). Through extensive simulation we show that we can indeed recover the enrichment history per galaxy. We then analyze a spectroscopic sample of 2286 early-type galaxies from the SDSS selected to be ETGs. We separate out those galaxies for which the abundance of iron in stars grows throughout the lifetime of the galaxy, i.e. in which [Fe/H]o< [Fe/H]i. We call those consistent with self-enrichment, while the others must have experienced some mergers or significant gas accretion. We confirm earlier work where the [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] parameters are correlated with the mass and velocity dispersion of ETGs. We emphasize that the strongest relation is between [α/Fe] and age. This relation falls into two regimes, one with a steep slope for old galaxies and one with a shallow slope for younger ETGs. The vast majority of ETGs in our sample do not show the “knee” in the plot of [Fe/H] vs. [α/Fe] commonly observed in local group galaxies. This implies that for the vast majority of ETGs, the stars younger than 9.5 Gyr are likely to have been accreted or formed from accreted gas. The properties of the intermediate-age stars in accretion-dominated ETGs indicate that mass growth through late (minor) mergers in ETGs is dominated by galaxies with low [Fe/H] and low [α/Fe]. The method of reconstructing the stellar enrichment histories of ETGs introduced in this paper promises to constrain the star formation and mass assembly histories of large samples of galaxies in a unique way.
Key words: galaxies: abundances / galaxies: stellar content / galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD
© ESO, 2015
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