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arXiv 2602.15604astro-ph.GA
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年轻恒星和恒星形成区域中对齐和不对齐的金属丰度梯度

Aligned and misaligned metallicity gradients in young stars and star-forming regions in the EAGLE discs

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学);Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学天体物理研究所);Centro de Astro-Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile(智利天主教 Pontificia 大学天文工程学院)

Isha Shailesh, Patricia B. Tissera, Emanuel Sillero

AI总结:

研究通过分析年轻恒星和星形气体的金属丰度梯度对齐情况,探讨其对银河系近期演化历史的约束作用,揭示不同演化路径的特征。

摘要:

盘状星系在恒星和气体组件中均表现出径向金属丰度梯度。星形气体(SFG)和年轻恒星(YSs)反映了星系近期的演化历史。本文利用EAGLE项目高分辨率运行,推导出年轻恒星(年龄<2 Gyr)和星形气体的径向、方位平均氧丰度分布,并测量其梯度作为这些分布线性拟合的斜率。根据斜率符号(N为负,P为正)将星系分为四类:NN、NP、PP和PN(第一字母代表YSs,第二字母代表SFG)。发现NN、NP、PP和PN组合的金属丰度分布反映了过去约2 Gyr的不同演化路径。NN星系表现出持续的内向外生长伴随高恒星形成效率,而NP和PP系统显示近期或持续的反馈驱动破坏,PP星系可能主要由超新星反馈塑造。PN星系则显示过去剧烈事件后梯度恢复的证据,突显了气体流入、反馈和气体冷却在塑造金属丰度分布中的相互作用。星系中恒星和气体金属丰度梯度的对齐程度提供了一种确定星系演化历史中重要事件发生时间的方法,这些事件通过气体流入、恒星形成触发和金属混合共同作用。它们也可能在观测数据提供合适比较数据集时成为子网格物理的探测工具。

英文摘要:

Disc galaxies exhibit radial metallicity gradients in both their stellar and gaseous components. The star-forming gas (SFG) in HII regions and young stars (YSs) trace the recent evolutionary history of the galaxy. We aim to assess the extent to which the joint analysis of metallicity gradient alignment in YSs and SFG can constrain the recent evolutionary history of galaxies. Using the high-resolution run of the EAGLE project, we derived radial, azimuthally averaged oxygen abundance profiles for YSs (age < 2 Gyr) and SFG and measured their gradients as the slopes of linear fits to these profiles. We classified galaxies into four groups based on the signs (N for negative and P for positive) of the slopes: NN, NP, PP, and PN (the first letter is for YSs and the second for SFG). We found that galaxies with NN, NP, PP, and PN combinations of metallicity profiles reflect different evolutionary paths over the past ~ 2 Gyr. NN galaxies exhibit sustained inside-out growth accompanied by high star formation efficiency, whereas NP and PP systems show evidence of recent or ongoing feedback-driven disruption, with PP galaxies likely being predominantly shaped by supernova feedback. PN galaxies, by contrast, show evidence of past violent events followed by gradient recovery, highlighting the interplay between inflows, feedback, and gas cooling in shaping metallicity distributions. The degree of alignment between the stellar and gas metallicity gradients provides a way to time the occurrence of significant events in the evolutionary history of galaxies, which contribute through a combination of gas inflows, star formation triggering, and metal mixing. They could also serve as probes of sub-grid physics when observations provide suitable comparison datasets. [Abridged]

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