The 6dF Galaxy Survey: a low-redshift benchmark for bulge-dominated galaxies

TL;DR

The 6dF Galaxy Survey offers a comprehensive dataset to analyze the relationships between galaxy mass, stellar populations, and other properties, revealing key correlations and trends in bulge-dominated galaxies.

Contribution

This study presents the first analysis of correlations between mass and stellar population parameters using the large 6dF Galaxy Survey sample.

Findings

Age and metallicity are anti-correlated in galaxies.

Passive galaxies show strong mass-metallicity and age-alpha/Fe correlations.

Old passive galaxies exhibit a downsizing relation between age and mass.

Abstract

The 6dF Galaxy Survey provides a very large sample of galaxies with reliable measurements of Lick line indices and velocity dispersions. This sample can be used to explore the correlations between mass and stellar population parameters such as age, metallicity and [alpha/Fe]. Preliminary results from such an analysis are presented here, and show that age and metallicity are significantly anti-correlated for both passive and star-forming galaxies. Passive galaxies have strong correlations between mass and metallicity and between age and alpha-element over-abundance, which combine to produce a downsizing relation between age and mass. For old passive galaxies, the different trends of M/L with mass and luminosity in different passbands result from the differential effect of the mass-metallicity relation on the luminosities in each passband. Future work with this sample will examine the Fundamental Plane of bulge-dominated galaxies and the influence of environment on relations between stellar population parameters and mass.