The effect of differential galactic winds on the chemical evolution of galaxies

TL;DR

This paper derives analytical models to understand how differential galactic winds influence the chemical evolution of galaxies, showing they lower metallicity and maintain constant abundance ratios unless element-specific ejection efficiencies vary.

Contribution

It provides new analytical solutions for galaxy chemical evolution models incorporating differential winds and infall, clarifying their effects on metallicity and abundance ratios.

Findings

Differential winds reduce galaxy metallicity proportionally to metal ejection efficiency.

Abundance ratios remain constant unless different elements have different ejection efficiencies.

Time-delay effects from Type Ia supernovae are essential to explain observed abundance variations.

Abstract

(Abridged) The aim of this paper is to study the basic equations of the chemical evolution of galaxies with gas flows. We focus on models in which the outflow is differential, namely in which the heavy elements (or some of the heavy elements) can leave the parent galaxy more easily than other chemical species such as H and He. We study the chemical evolution of galaxies in the framework of simple models. This allows us to solve analytically the equations for the evolution of gas masses and metallicities. We find new analytical solutions for various cases in which the effects of winds and infall are taken into account. Differential galactic winds have the effect of reducing the global metallicity of a galaxy, with the amount of reduction increasing with the ejection efficiency of the metals. Abundance ratios are predicted to remain constant throughout the whole evolution of the galaxy, even in the presence of differential winds. One way to change them is by assuming differential winds with different ejection efficiencies for different elements. However, simple models apply only to elements produced on short timescales, namely all by Type II SNe, and therefore large differences in the ejection efficiencies of different metals are unlikely. Variations in abundance ratios such as [O/Fe] in galaxies, without including the Fe production by Type Ia supernovae, can in principle be obtained by assuming an unlikely different efficiency in the loss of O relative to Fe from Type II supernovae. Therefore, we conclude that it is not realistic to ignore Type Ia supernovae and that the delayed production of some chemical elements relative to others (time-delay model) remains the most plausible explanation for the evolution of alpha-elements relative to Fe.