The hELENa project - II. Abundance distribution trends of early-type galaxies: from dwarfs to giants

TL;DR

This study analyzes [Mg/Fe] abundance trends in early-type galaxies across a wide mass range, revealing common formation patterns and evolutionary links with dwarf galaxies, influenced by environment and mass.

Contribution

It provides a homogeneous analysis of [Mg/Fe] trends in early-type galaxies from dwarfs to giants, highlighting a universal inside-out formation pattern and environmental effects.

Findings

[Mg/Fe] scales with velocity dispersion at fixed [Fe/H]

dEs share [Mg/Fe] trends with high-metallicity stars in the Milky Way

dEs likely evolved from late-type galaxies losing gas in dense environments

Abstract

In this second paper of T$h$e role of $E$nvironment in shaping $L$ow-mass $E$arly-type $N$earby g$a$laxies (hELENa) series we study [Mg/Fe] abundance distribution trends of early-type galaxies observed with the SAURON integral field unit, spanning a wide range in mass and local environment densities: 20 low-mass early-types (dEs) of Sybilska et al. (2017) and 258 massive early types (ETGs) of the $ATLAS^{3D}$ project, all homogeneously reduced and analyzed. We show that the [Mg/Fe] ratios scale with velocity dispersion ($\sigma$) at fixed [Fe/H] and that they evolve with [Fe/H] along similar paths for all early-types, grouped in bins of increasing local and global {$\sigma$}, as well as the second velocity moment $V_{rms}$, indicating a common inside-out formation pattern. We then place our dEs on the [Mg/Fe] $vs.$ [Fe/H] diagram of Local Group galaxies and show that dEs occupy the same region and show a similar trend line slope in the diagram as the high-metallicity stars of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. This finding extends the similar trend found for dwarf spheroidal $vs.$ dwarf irregular galaxies and supports the notion that dEs have evolved from late-type galaxies that have lost their gas at a point of their evolution, which likely coincided with them entering denser environments.