We report a significantly tighter trend between gaseous N/O and M∗/Re (a proxy for gravitational potential) than has previously been reported between gaseous metallicity and M∗/Re, for star-forming galaxies in the MaNGA survey. We argue this result to be a consequence of deeper potential wells conferring greater resistance to metal outflows while also being associated with earlier star-formation histories, combined with N/O being comparatively unaffected by metal-poor inflows. The potential-N/O relation thus appears to be both more resistant to short-timescale baryonic processes and also more reflective of a galaxy's chemical evolution state, when compared to previously-considered relations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.17945,
title = {A tight N/O-potential relation in star-forming galaxies},
author = {Nicholas Fraser Boardman and Vivienne Wild and Natalia Vale Asari},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.17945},
year = {2024}
}