Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity relations in passive and star-forming galaxies from SPH-cosmological simulations

TL;DR

This study uses SPH-cosmological simulations to analyze the evolution of the mass-metallicity relation in passive and star-forming galaxies up to redshift 2, revealing different evolutionary behaviors and underlying mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a self-consistent simulation-based analysis of the mass-metallicity relation's evolution, highlighting the role of galaxy activity, mass, and feedback processes.

Findings

Passive galaxies show little evolution in the ZM slope, except for high-mass ones at high redshift.

Star-forming galaxies exhibit increasing scatter in the ZM relation with redshift.

Anti-correlations between sSFR and both stellar mass and metallicity are confirmed.

Abstract

We present results from SPH-cosmological simulations, including self-consistent modelling of SN feedback and chemical evolution, of galaxies belonging to two clusters and twelve groups. We reproduce the mass-metallicity (ZM) relation of galaxies classified in two samples according to their star-forming activity, as parametrized by their sSFR, across a redshift range up to z=2. Its slope shows irrelevant evolution in the passive sample, being steeper in groups than in clusters. However, the sub-sample of high-mass passive galaxies only is characterized by a steep increase of the slope with redshift, from which it can be inferred that the bulk of the slope evolution of the ZM relation is driven by the more massive passive objects. (...ABRIDGED...) The ZM relation for the star-forming sample reveals an increasing scatter with redshift, indicating that it is still being built at early epochs. The star-forming galaxies make up a tight sequence in the SFR-M_* plane at high redshift, whose scatter increases with time alongside with the consolidation of the passive sequence. We also confirm the anti-correlation between sSFR and stellar mass, pointing at a key role of the former in determining the galaxy downsizing, as the most significant means of diagnostics of the star formation efficiency. Likewise, an anti-correlation between sSFR and metallicity can be established for the star-forming galaxies, while on the contrary more active galaxies in terms of simple SFR are also metal-richer. We discuss these results in terms of the mechanisms driving the evolution within the high- and low-mass regimes at different epochs: mergers, feedback-driven outflows and the intrinsic variation of the star formation efficiency.