Related papers: Metallicity distributions in and around galaxies
A fair and complete accounting of cosmic baryons now appears possible, because most of them are in states which are either directly observable or reliably constrained by indirect arguments. More than three-quarters of the baryons are…
The Galaxy is in continuous elemental evolution. Since new elements produced by dying stars are delivered to the interstellar medium, the formation of new enerations of stars and planetary systems is influenced by this metal enrichment. We…
Chemical abundances provide important clues to the evolution of galaxies. Ionized nebulae are one of the main sources of chemical abundance measurements, especially in external galaxies. Studies of H II regions have shown that the overall…
Energetic feedback from Supernovae and stellar winds can drive galactic winds. Dwarf galaxies, due to their shallower potential wells, are assumed to be more vulnerable to this phenomenon. Metal loss through galactic winds is also commonly…
The determination of the metal abundances in the neutral interstellar medium of dwarf star-forming galaxies is a key step in understanding their physical and chemical evolution. This type of investigation has been possible in the last 5…
The analysis of the chemical composition of galaxies provides fundamental insights into their evolution. This holds true also in the case of the outer regions of spiral galaxies. This Chapter presents the observational data, accumulated in…
We discuss recent developments on the age and metallicity distribution for early type galaxies in different environments.
There are many processes that can transport gas from the galaxies to their environment and enrich the environment in this way with metals. These metal enrichment processes have a large influence on the evolution of both the galaxies and…
Since stellar populations enhance particular element abundances according to the yields and lifetimes of the stellar progenitors, the chemical evolution of galaxies serves as one of the key tools that allows the tracing of galaxy evolution.…
Observations show that galaxies follow a mass-metallicity relation over a wide range of masses. One currently favoured explanation is that less massive galaxies are less able to retain the gas and stellar ejecta and thus may lose the…
By means of detailed chemo-photometric models for elliptical, spiral and irregular galaxies, we evaluate the cosmic history of the production of chemical elements as well as the metal mass density of the present-day universe. We then…
The abundance evolution of galaxies depends critically on the balance between the mixing of metals in their interstellar medium, the inflow of new gas and the outflow of enriched gas. We study these processes in gas columns perpendicular to…
[Abridged] We investigate how a range of physical processes affect the cosmic metal distribution using a suite of cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations. Focusing on z = 0 and 2, we study the metallicities and metal mass fractions for…
We present an analytic formalism that describes the evolution of the stellar, gas, and metal content of galaxies. It is based on the idea, inspired by hydrodynamic simulations, that galaxies live in a slowly-evolving equilibrium between…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
This work studies the relation between gas-phase oxygen abundance and stellar-to-gas fraction in nearby galaxies. We first derive the theoretical prediction, and argue that this relation is fundamental, in the sense that it must be verified…
The gas metallicity distributions across individual galaxies and across galaxy samples can teach us much about how galaxies evolve. Massive galaxies typically possess negative metallicity gradients, and mass and metallicity are tightly…
Because of their deep gravitational potential wells, clusters of galaxies retain all the metals produced by the stellar populations of the member galaxies. Most of these metals reside in the hot plasma which dominates the baryon content of…
We construct three extreme different scenarios of the star formation histories applicable to a sample of dwarf galaxies, based either on their present metallicity or their luminosity. The three possible scenarios imply different mechanical…
The trends of chemical abundances and abundance ratios observed in stars of different ages, kinematics, and metallicities bear the imprints of several physical processes that concur to shape the host galaxy properties. By inspecting these…