Present-day mass-metallicity relation for galaxies using a new electron temperature method

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
e-mail: robyates@mpa-garching.mpg.de
² Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, 85741 Garching, Germany
³ Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
⁴ Department of Astronomy, The Oskar Klein Center, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

Received: 12 August 2019
Accepted: 9 December 2019

Abstract

Aims. We investigate electron temperature (T_e) and gas-phase oxygen abundance (Z_Te) measurements for galaxies in the local Universe (z <  0.25). Our sample comprises spectra from a total of 264 emission-line systems, ranging from individual HII regions to whole galaxies, including 23 composite HII regions from star-forming main sequence galaxies in the MaNGA survey.

Methods. We utilise 130 of these systems with directly measurable T_e(OII) to calibrate a new metallicity-dependent T_e(OIII)–T_e(OII) relation that provides a better representation of our varied dataset than existing relations from the literature. We also provide an alternative T_e(OIII)–T_e(NII) calibration. This new T_e method is then used to obtain accurate Z_Te estimates and form the mass – metallicity relation (MZR) for a sample of 118 local galaxies.

Results. We find that all the T_e(OIII)–T_e(OII) relations considered here systematically under-estimate Z_Te for low-ionisation systems by up to 0.6 dex. We determine that this is due to such systems having an intrinsically higher O⁺ abundance than O⁺⁺ abundance, rendering Z_Te estimates based only on [OIII] lines inaccurate. We therefore provide an empirical correction based on strong emission lines to account for this bias when using our new T_e(OIII)–T_e(OIII) and T_e(OIII)–T_e(NII) relations. This allows for accurate metallicities (1σ = 0.08 dex) to be derived for any low-redshift system with an [OIII]λ4363 detection, regardless of its physical size or ionisation state. The MZR formed from our dataset is in very good agreement with those formed from direct measurements of metal recombination lines and blue supergiant absorption lines, in contrast to most other T_e-based and strong-line-based MZRs. Our new T_e method therefore provides an accurate and precise way of obtaining Z_Te for a large and diverse range of star-forming systems in the local Universe.