Nitrogen Production in Starburst Galaxies Detected by GALEX
Abstract
We investigate the production of nitrogen in star forming galaxies with ultraviolet (UV) radiation detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer Satellite (GALEX). We use a sample of 8,745 GALEX emission line galaxies matched to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample. We derive both gas-phase oxygen and nitrogen abundances for the sample, and apply stellar population synthesis models to derive stellar masses and star formation histories of the galaxies. We compare oxygen abundances derived using three different diagnostics. We derive the specific star formation rates of the galaxies by modeling the 7-band GALEX+SDSS photometry. We find that galaxies that have log SFR/M > -10.0 typically have values of log N/O ~0.05 dex less than galaxies with log SFR/M < -10.0 and similar oxygen abundances.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0706.0238,
title = {Nitrogen Production in Starburst Galaxies Detected by GALEX},
author = {Ryan P. Mallery and Lisa Kewley and R. Michael Rich and Samir Salim and Stephane Charlot and Christy Tremonti and Mark Seibert and Todd Small and Ted Wyder and Tom A. Barlow and Karl Forster and Peter G. Friedman and D. Christopher Martin and Patrick Morrissey and Susan G. Neff and David Schiminovich and Luciana Bianchi and Jose Donas and Timothy Heckman and Young-Wook Lee and Barry F. Madore and Bruno Milliard and Alex S. Szalay and Barry Y. Welsh and Suk Young Yi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0706.0238},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 7 figues, 5 tables, Accepted to ApJ