Simultaneous measurement of low- and high-mass IMF slopes in 214 star-forming galaxies reveals diversity, weak correlation between ends, and links to stellar mass, star formation rate, and metallicity.
IMF - metallicity: a tight local relation revealed by the CALIFA survey
2 Pith papers cite this work, alongside 134 external citations. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) have been invoked to explain the spectroscopic and dynamical properties of early-type galaxies. However, no observations have yet been able to disentangle the physical driver. We analyse here a sample of 24 early-type galaxies drawn from the CALIFA survey, deriving in a homogeneous way their stellar population and kinematic properties. We find that the local IMF is tightly related to the local metallicity, becoming more bottom-heavy towards metal-rich populations. Our result, combined with the galaxy mass-metallicity relation, naturally explains previous claims of a galaxy mass-IMF relation, derived from non-IFU spectra. If we assume that - within the star formation environment of early-type galaxies - metallicity is the main driver of IMF variations, a significant revision of the interpretation of galaxy evolution observables is necessary.
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astro-ph.GA 2years
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UNVERDICTED 2representative citing papers
High [Si/Mg] = 0.67 in NGC 1277 cannot be explained by standard models and suggests pair-instability supernovae from very massive early stars.
citing papers explorer
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Hector Galaxy Survey: Linking the low- and high-mass ends of the initial mass function in star-forming galaxies
Simultaneous measurement of low- and high-mass IMF slopes in 214 star-forming galaxies reveals diversity, weak correlation between ends, and links to stellar mass, star formation rate, and metallicity.
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Chemical hints of Population III stars from silicon abundances in massive galaxies
High [Si/Mg] = 0.67 in NGC 1277 cannot be explained by standard models and suggests pair-instability supernovae from very massive early stars.