The VISCACHA survey XIV. Chemical evolution history of the SMC: The Southern Bridge Clusters

TL;DR

This study analyzes the chemical evolution of the Small Magellanic Cloud's star clusters, revealing a major merger event around 6 Gyr ago that influenced their metallicity and star formation history, and proposing a unified evolutionary model.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive chemical evolution model for both the West Halo and Southern Bridge clusters, highlighting a major merger event at ~6 Gyr ago as a key factor.

Findings

West Halo shows a clear age-metallicity relation with a dip at ~6 Gyr.

Southern Bridge clusters have a similar chemical evolution trend to West Halo.

A major merger at ~6 Gyr ago explains the observed chemical enrichment patterns.

Abstract

The chemical evolution history of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is complex and is best understood through a comprehensive analysis of star clusters across its various regions. The VISCACHA survey aims to fully explain the chemical evolution of SMC star clusters by analyzing different sub-regions adopted from an existing framework. The west halo (WH) region, which contains the oldest and most metal-poor stellar populations, exhibits a clear age-metallicity relation (AMR) with minimal dispersion. This region shows a significant dip of ~0.5 dex in metallicity approximately 6 Gyr ago. This was likely caused by a major merger event that subsequently accelerated the star formation rate. Clusters in the Southern Bridge (SB) and Northern Bridge regions of the SMC may have experienced distinct chemical enrichment histories, as suggested by our previous works but with limited data coverage. Furthermore, the AMR of wing/bridge (W/B) shows no sign of enrichment caused by the aforementioned merger event, but exhibits signatures of the recent collisions between the clouds contemporaneous with the epochs of the Magellanic Stream and Bridge formations. In this study, we present an updated AMR for the SB region based on a sample that includes approximately 67% of its known clusters. Contrary to the expectation of a very unique chemical evolution history, these SB clusters show a trend similar to the one of the WH clusters. The chemical evolution models that best fit the AMR trend of the SB clusters show excellent agreement with the major merger model proposed for the WH clusters. Building on this, we suggest a new unified chemical evolution model for both the WH and SB clusters, which can be explained by a major merger at ~6 Gyr followed by episodic chemical enrichment over time.