Chemical Signature of a Major Merger in the Early Formation of Small Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

This study uses chemical evolution models to identify a major merger event in the early history of the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing insights into its formation and chemical signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a new chemical evolution model that predicts a specific merger event and its chemical signatures, linking it to the SMC's formation history.

Findings

Evidence of a merger imprinted in the age-metallicity relation.

Predicted merger occurred ~7.5 Gyr ago with a 1:1 to 1:4 mass ratio.

Large scatter in [Mg/Fe] predicted for certain metallicities.

Abstract

The formation history of the Small Magellanic cloud (SMC) is unraveled based on the results of our new chemical evolution models constructed for the SMC, highlighting the observed anomaly in the age-metallicity relation for star clusters in the SMC. We first propose that evidence of a major merger is imprinted in the age-metallicity relation as a dip in [Fe/H]. Our models predict that the major merger with a mass ratio of 1:1 to 1:4 occurred at ~7.5 Gyr ago, with a good reproduction of the abundance distribution function of field stars in the SMC. Furthermore, our models predict a relatively large scatter in [Mg/Fe] for -1.4 < [Fe/H] <-1.1 as a reflection of a looping feature resulting from the temporally inverse progress of chemical enrichment, which can be tested against future observational results. Given that the observed velocity dispersion (~30 km/s) of the SMC is much smaller than that (~160 km/s) of the Galactic halo, our finding strongly implies that the predicted merger event happened in a small group environment that was far from the Galaxy and contained a number of small gas-rich dwarfs comparable to the SMC. This theoretical view is extensively discussed in the framework that considers a connection with the formation history of the Large Magellanic cloud.