Bibcode
Lara-López, M. A.; Cepa, J.; Bongiovanni, A.; Pérez-García, A. M.; Ederoclite, A.; Castañeda, H.; Fernández-Lorenzo, M.; Pović, M.; Sánchez-Portal, M.
Referencia bibliográfica
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 521, id.L53
Fecha de publicación:
10
2010
Revista
Número de citas
349
Número de citas referidas
332
Descripción
Context. Star formation rate (SFR), metallicity, and stellar mass are
among the most important parameters of star-forming (SF) galaxies
characterizing their formation and evolution. They are known to be
related to each other both at low and high redshift in the
mass-metallicity, mass-SFR, and metallicity-SFR relations. Aims:
We demonstrate the existence of a plane in a 3D parameter space defined
by the axes SFR [log (SFR)(M&sun; yr-1)] , gas
metallicity [12 + log (O/H)], and stellar mass [log
(Mstar/M&sun;)] of SF galaxies. Methods: We
used SF galaxies from the “main galaxy sample” of the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey-Data Release 7 (SDSS-DR7) in the redshift range 0.04
< z < 0.1 and r-magnitudes between 14.5 and 17.77. Metallicities,
SFRs, and stellar masses were taken from the Max-Planck-Institute for
Astrophysics-John Hopkins University (MPA-JHU) emission-line analysis
database. Results: From a final sample of 32 575 galaxies, we
find for the first time a fundamental plane for field galaxies relating
the SFR, gas metallicity, and stellar mass for SF galaxies in the local
universe. One of the applications of this plane would be to estimate
stellar masses from SFR and metallicity. High redshift data from the
literature at redshift ~0.85, 2.2, and 3.5, do not show evidence of
evolution in this fundamental plane.
Appendix A is only available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org