Wolf-Rayet galaxies in SDSS-IV MaNGA. II. Metallicity dependence of the high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large sample of Wolf-Rayet galaxies to investigate how the high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function varies with metallicity, finding it becomes steeper at higher metallicities.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis linking IMF high-mass slope to metallicity using a large, diverse sample and Bayesian spectral fitting methods.

Findings

IMF high-mass slope {} correlates positively with metallicity

Steeper IMF at higher metallicities, approaching Salpeter slope

Results consistent across single and binary stellar evolution models

Abstract

As hosts of living high-mass stars, Wolf-Rayet (WR) regions or WR galaxies are ideal objects for constraining the high-mass end of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). We construct a large sample of 910 WR galaxies/regions that cover a wide range of stellar metallicity (from Z~0.001 up to Z~0.03), by combining three catalogs of WR galaxies/regions previously selected from the SDSS and SDSS-IV/MaNGA surveys. We measure the equivalent widths of the WR blue bump at ~4650 A for each spectrum. They are compared with predictions from stellar evolutionary models Starburst99 and BPASS, with different IMF assumptions (high-mass slope {\alpha} of the IMF ranging from 1.0 up to 3.3). Both singular evolution and binary evolution are considered. We also use a Bayesian inference code to perform full spectral fitting to WR spectra with stellar population spectra from BPASS as fitting templates. We then make model selection among different {\alpha} assumptions based on Bayesian evidence. These analyses have consistently led to a positive correlation of IMF high-mass slope {\alpha} with stellar metallicity Z, i.e. with steeper IMF (more bottom-heavy) at higher metallicities. Specifically, an IMF with {\alpha}=1.00 is preferred at the lowest metallicity (Z~0.001), and a Salpeter or even steeper IMF is preferred at the highest metallicity (Z~0.03). These conclusions hold even when binary population models are adopted.