No Arabic abstract
We examine the relation between breaks in the surface brightness profiles and radial abundance gradients within the optical radius in the discs of 134 spiral galaxies from the CALIFA survey. The distribution of the radial abundance (in logarithmic scale) in each galaxy was fitted by simple and broken linear relations. The surface brightness profile was fitted assuming pure and broken exponents for the disc. We find that the maximum absolute difference between the abundances in a disc given by broken and pure linear relations is less than 0.05 dex in the majority of our galaxies and exceeds the scatter in abundances for 26 out of 134 galaxies considered. The scatter in abundances around the broken linear relation is close (within a few percent) to that around the pure linear relation. The breaks in the surface brightness profiles are more prominent. The scatter around the broken exponent in a number of galaxies is lower by a factor of two or more than that around the pure exponent. The shapes of the abundance gradients and surface brightness profiles within the optical radius in a galaxy may be different. A pure exponential surface brightness profile may be accompanied by a broken abundance gradient and vise versa. There is no correlation between the break radii of the abundance gradients and surface brightness profiles. Thus, a break in the surface brightness profile does not need to be accompanied by a break in the abundance gradient.
Spiral arms are the most singular features in disc galaxies. These structures can exhibit different patterns, namely grand design and flocculent arms, with easily distinguishable characteristics. However, their origin and the mechanisms shaping them are unclear. The overall role of spirals in the chemical evolution of disc galaxies is another unsolved question. In particular, it has not been fully explored if the hii,regions of spiral arms present different properties from those located in the interarm regions. Here we analyse the radial oxygen abundance gradient of the arm and interarm star forming regions of 63 face-on spiral galaxies using CALIFA Integral Field Spectroscopy data. We focus the analysis on three characteristic parameters of the profile: slope, zero-point, and scatter. The sample is morphologically separated into flocculent versus grand design spirals and barred versus unbarred galaxies. We find subtle but statistically significant differences between the arm and interarm distributions for flocculent galaxies, suggesting that the mechanisms generating the spiral structure in these galaxies may be different to those producing grand design systems, for which no significant differences are found. We also find small differences in barred galaxies, not observed in unbarred systems, hinting that bars may affect the chemical distribution of these galaxies but not strongly enough as to be reflected in the overall abundance distribution. In light of these results, we propose bars and flocculent structure as two distinct mechanisms inducing differences in the abundance distribution between arm and interarm star forming regions.
We determine the radial abundance distributions across the disks of fourteen irregular galaxies of the types Sm and Im (morphological T types T = 9 and T =10) as traced by their HII regions. The oxygen and nitrogen abundances in HII regions are estimated through the Te method or/and with the counterpart method (C method). Moreover, we examine the correspondence between the radial abundance gradient and the surface brightness profile. We find that irregular galaxies with a flat inner profile (flat or outwardly increasing surface brightness in the central region) show shallow (if any) radial abundance gradients. On the other hand, irregular galaxies with a steep inner profile (with or without a bulge or central star cluster) usually show rather steep radial abundance gradients. This is in contrast to the widely held belief that irregular galaxies do not usually show a radial abundance gradient.
Aims: The physics driving features such as breaks observed in galaxy surface brightness (SB) profiles remains contentious. Here, we assess the importance of stellar radial motions in shaping their characteristics. Methods: We use the simulated Milky Way-mass, cosmological discs, from the Ramses Disc Environment Study (RaDES) to characterise the radial redistribution of stars in galaxies displaying type I (pure exponentials), II (downbending), and III (upbending) SB profiles. We compare radial profiles of the mass fractions and the velocity dispersions of different sub-populations of stars according to their birth and current locations. Results: Radial redistribution of stars is important in all galaxies regardless of their light profiles. Type II breaks seem to be a consequence of the combined effects of outward-moving and accreted stars. The former produces shallower inner profiles (lack of stars in the inner disc) and accumulate material around the break radius and beyond, strengthening the break; the latter can weaken or even convert the break into a pure exponential. Further accretion from satellites can concentrate material in the outermost parts, leading to type III breaks that can coexist with type II breaks, but situated further out. Type III galaxies would be the result of an important radial redistribution of material throughout the entire disc, as well as a concentration of accreted material in the outskirts. In addition, type III galaxies display the most efficient radial redistribution and the largest number of accreted stars, followed by type I and II systems, suggesting that type I galaxies may be an intermediate case between types II and III. In general, the velocity dispersion profiles of all galaxies tend to flatten or even ncrease around the locations where the breaks are found. The age and metallicity profiles are also affected, exhibiting...[abridged]
We use the EAGLE simulations to study the oxygen abundance gradients of gas discs in galaxies within the stellar mass range [10^9.5, 10^10.8]Mo at z=0. The estimated median oxygen gradient is -0.011 (0.002) dex kpc^-1, which is shallower than observed. No clear trend between simulated disc oxygen gradient and galaxy stellar mass is found when all galaxies are considered. However, the oxygen gradient shows a clear correlation with gas disc size so that shallower abundance slopes are found for increasing gas disc sizes. Positive oxygen gradients are detected for ~40 per cent of the analysed gas discs, with a slight higher frequency in low mass galaxies. Galaxies that have quiet merger histories show a positive correlation between oxygen gradient and stellar mass, so that more massive galaxies tend to have shallower metallicity gradients. At high stellar mass, there is a larger fraction of rotational-dominated galaxies in low density regions. At low stellar mass, non-merger galaxies show a large variety of oxygen gradients and morphologies. The normalization of the disc oxygen gradients in non-merger galaxies by the effective radius removes the trend with stellar mass. Conversely, galaxies that experienced mergers show a weak relation between oxygen gradient and stellar mass. Additionally, the analysed EAGLE discs show no clear dependence of the oxygen gradients on local environment, in agreement with current observational findings.
McGaugh et al. (2016) have found, in a large sample of disc systems, a tight nonlinear relationship between the total radial accelerations $g$ and their components $g_b$ arisen from the distribution of the baryonic matter [McGaugh_2016]. Here, we investigate the existence of such relation in Dwarf Disc Spirals and Low Surface Brightness galaxies on the basis of [Karukes_2017] and [DiPaolo_2018]. We have accurate mass profiles for 36 Dwarf Disc Spirals and 72 LSB galaxies. These galaxies have accelerations that cover the McGaugh range but also reach out to one order of magnitude below the smallest accelerations present in McGaugh et al. (2016) and span different Hubble Types. We found, in our samples, that the $g$ vs $g_b$ relation has a very different profile and also other intrinsic novel properties, among those, the dependence on a second variable: the galactic radius, normalised to the optical radius $R_{opt}$, at which the two accelerations are measured. We show that the new far than trivial $g$ vs $(g_b, r/R_{opt})$ relationship is nothing else than a direct consequence of the complex, but coordinated mass distributions of the baryons and the dark matter (DM) in disc systems. Our analysis shows that the McGaugh et al. (2016) relation is a limiting case of a new universal relation that can be very well framed in the standard DM halo in the Newtonian Gravity paradigm.