The Metallicities of Low Stellar Mass Galaxies and the Scatter in the Mass-Metallicity Relation

TL;DR

This study comprehensively measures the metallicities of low-mass galaxies, revealing that the scatter in the mass-metallicity relation is larger at lower masses and providing new lower limits for this scatter.

Contribution

It provides the most extensive census of low-mass galaxy metallicities and quantifies the scatter in the mass-metallicity relation down to stellar masses of 10^7 M_solar.

Findings

Scatter in the MZ relation increases at lower stellar masses.

Lower limit for metallicity scatter is slightly smaller than theoretical predictions.

Low metallicity galaxies dominate the scatter in the MZ relation.

Abstract

In this investigation we quantify the metallicities of low mass galaxies by constructing the most comprehensive census to date. We use galaxies from the SDSS and DEEP2 survey and estimate metallicities from their optical emission lines. We also use two smaller samples from the literature which have metallicities determined by the direct method using the temperature sensitive [OIII]4363 line. We examine the scatter in the local mass-metallicity (MZ) relation determined from ~20,000 star-forming galaxies in the SDSS and show that it is larger at lower stellar masses, consistent with the theoretical scatter in the MZ relation determined from hydrodynamical simulations. We determine a lower limit for the scatter in metallicities of galaxies down to stellar masses of ~10^7 M_solar that is only slightly smaller than the expected scatter inferred from the SDSS MZ relation and significantly larger than what is previously established in the literature. The average metallicity of star-forming galaxies increases with stellar mass. By examining the scatter in the SDSS MZ relation, we show that this is mostly due to the lowest metallicity galaxies. The population of low mass, metal-rich galaxies have properties which are consistent with previously identified galaxies that may be transitional objects between gas-rich dwarf irregulars and gas-poor dwarf spheroidals and ellipticals.