The Chemical Evolution of Narrow Emission Line Galaxies: the Key to their Formation Processes

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large sample of narrow emission line galaxies to understand how their spectral features relate to chemical evolution and galaxy formation processes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spectral variations in these galaxies are linked to their chemical evolution, providing insights into their formation mechanisms.

Findings

Spectral characteristics correlate with chemical abundances and galaxy morphology.

Spectral variations reflect underlying chemical evolution, not just ionization or structural differences.

Different galaxy formation processes can explain the observed chemical evolution patterns.

Abstract

Using the largest sample of narrow emission line galaxies available so far, we show that their spectral characteristics are correlated with different physical parameters, like the chemical abundances, the morphologies, the masses of the bulge and the mean stellar age of the stellar populations of the host galaxies. It suggests that the spectral variations observed in standard spectroscopic diagnostic diagrams are not due solely to variations of ionization parameters or structures but reflect also the chemical evolution of the galaxies, which in turn can be explained by different galaxy formation processes.