Models of evolution of gas and abundances in dwarf irregular galaxies

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive grid of chemical evolution models for dwarf irregular galaxies, exploring how star formation efficiency, galaxy mass, and collapse time influence gas content and metallicity over time.

Contribution

It introduces a new set of models that simulate the chemical evolution of isolated dwarf galaxies without environmental effects, covering a wide range of properties.

Findings

Models show a spectrum from low-metallicity, gas-rich to high-metallicity, gas-poor galaxies.

Time evolution of oxygen and nitrogen abundances correlates with star formation history.

Gas loss via supernova winds is considered but not dominant in the models.

Abstract

We have developed a grid of chemical evolution models applied to dwarf isolated galaxies, using \cite{gav05} yields. The input data enclose different star formation efficiencies, galaxy mass and collapse time values. The result is a wide collection of solutions that vary from objects with low metallicity and great amount of gas, to those with little gas and high metallicity. No environmental effects like tidal or galactic winds have been treated, so these objects are expected to be close to field dwarf galaxies, more than cluster ones. We have studied the time evolution of the abundance of oxygen and nitrogen and the amount of gas, related to their star formation history, as well as the possibility of gas losses by SN winds.