Conversions between gas-phase metallicities in MaNGA

Abstract

We present polynomial conversions between each of 11 different strong line gas-phase metallicity calibrations, each based on similar to 1.1 million star-forming spaxels in the public Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 15 (DR15) Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey. For this sample, which is similar to 20 times larger than previous works, we present fifth-order polynomial fits for each of 110 possible calibration conversions, for both Small Magellanic Cloud-type and Milky Way-type dust corrections. The typical 2 sigma scatter around our polynomial fits is 0.1 dex; we present the range over which the metallicities are valid. Conversions between metallicities which rely on the same set of line ratios, or a heavily shared set of emission lines, have reduced scatter in their conversions relative to those conversions with little overlap in required emission lines. Calibration conversions with less consistent sets of emission lines also have increased galaxy-to-galaxy variability, and this variability can account for up to 35 percent of the total scatter. We also compare our conversions to previous work with the single fibre SDSS DR7 spectra along with higher spatial resolution data from the TYPHOON Integral Field Spectroscopy survey, resulting in comparison samples with spatial resolutions from several kpc down to similar to 100 pc. Our metallicity conversions, obtained with the large sample of MaNGA, are robust against the influence of diffuse ionized gas, redshift, effective radius, and spatial blurring, and are therefore consistent across both integrated spectra and the high-resolution integral field spectroscopy data.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Publication Date

10-2-2021

Publication Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Additional Department

Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2339

Keywords

Galaxies: Abundances, Galaxies: General, Galaxies: ISM, Galaxies, Statistics

Language

English

Format

text

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