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A Possible Origin of the Mass–Metallicity Relation of Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2006

Carsten Weidner ,
Joachim Köppen  and
Pavel Kroupa
Carsten Weidner
Affiliation:
Departemento de Astronomía, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile email: cweidner@astro.puc.cl
Joachim Köppen
Affiliation:
UMR 7550, Observatoire Astronomique, F-67000 Strasbourg, France email: koppen@astro.u-strasbg.fr
Pavel Kroupa
Affiliation:
Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (Sternwarte) der Universität Bonn, D-53121 Bonn, Germany email: pavel@astro.uni-bonn.de
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Abstract

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Previous attempts to explain the observed mass–metallicity relation of galaxies invoked selective outflows that need to be tuned to the particular cases.

Here we demonstrate that the simple concept of a star-formation history (SFH) dependent galaxy-wide integrated galactic initial stellar mass function (the IGIMF) can easily and naturally explain the mass–metallicity relation.

The idea relies on the simple fact that stars form in clusters. So to construct the IGIMF one needs to add all the stellar IMFs in the clusters formed in one epoch. The SFH enters because a galaxy with a high SFR can form more-massive clusters than a galaxy with a low SFR. Dwarf galaxies therefore have, per unit stellar mass formed, far fewer if any supernovae of type II than massive galaxies.

This work rests on the recent paper by Köppen, Weidner & Kroupa (2007).

Keywords

stars: luminosity functionmass function – ISM: abundances – ISM: evolution – galaxies: abundances – galaxies: evolution – galaxies: ISM
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 2 , Symposium S241: Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies , December 2006 , pp. 120 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

References

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