H II regions in galaxies are the sites of star formation, so they are special places for understanding the build-up of stellar mass in the universe. The line ratios of this ionized gas are frequently ...used to characterize the ionization conditions. We explore the connections between the ionization conditions and the properties of the overall underlying stellar population in H II regions, in order to uncover the actual physical connection between them. We use the H II regions catalog from the CALIFA survey, which is the largest in existence with more than 5000 H II regions, to explore their distribution across the classical OIII lambda5007/Hbeta vs. NII lambda6583/Halpha diagnostic diagram, and the way it depends on the oxygen abundance, ionization parameter, electron density, and dust attenuation. The results indicate that although H II regions are short-lived events, they are affected by the total underlying stellar population.
We describe and discuss the selection procedure and statistical properties of the galaxy sample used by the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey, a public legacy survey of 600 ...galaxies using integral field spectroscopy. The CALIFA “mother sample” was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7 photometric catalogue to include all galaxies with an r-band isophotal major axis between 45′′ and 79.2′′ and with a redshift 0.005 < z < 0.03. The mother sample contains 939 objects, 600 of which will be observed in the course of the CALIFA survey. The selection of targets for observations is based solely on visibility and thus keeps the statistical properties of the mother sample. By comparison with a large set of SDSS galaxies, we find that the CALIFA sample is representative of galaxies over a luminosity range of −19 > Mr > −23.1 and over a stellar mass range between 109.7 and 1011.4 M⊙. In particular, within these ranges, the diameter selection does not lead to any significant bias against – or in favour of – intrinsically large or small galaxies. Only below luminosities of Mr = −19 (or stellar masses <109.7 M⊙) is there a prevalence of galaxies with larger isophotal sizes, especially of nearly edge-on late-type galaxies, but such galaxies form <10% of the full sample. We estimate volume-corrected distribution functions in luminosities and sizes and show that these are statistically fully compatible with estimates from the full SDSS when accounting for large-scale structure. For full characterization of the sample, we also present a number of value-added quantities determined for the galaxies in the CALIFA sample. These include consistent multi-band photometry based on growth curve analyses; stellar masses; distances and quantities derived from these; morphological classifications; and an overview of available multi-wavelength photometric measurements. We also explore different ways of characterizing the environments of CALIFA galaxies, finding that the sample covers environmental conditions from the field to genuine clusters. We finally consider the expected incidence of active galactic nuclei among CALIFA galaxies given the existing pre-CALIFA data, finding that the final observed CALIFA sample will contain approximately 30 Sey2 galaxies.
We use spatially and temporally resolved maps of stellar population properties of 300 galaxies from the CALIFA integral field survey to investigate how the stellar metallicity (Z sub(*)) relates to ...the total stellar mass (M sub(*)) and the local mass surface density ( mu sub(*)) in both spheroidal- and disk-dominated galaxies. The galaxies are shown to follow a clear stellar mass-metallicity relation (MZR) over the whole 10 super(9)-10 super(12) M sub(middot in circle) range. This relation is steeper than the one derived from nebular abundances, which is similar to the flatter stellar MZR derived when we consider only young stars. We also find a strong relation between the local values of mu sub(*) and Z sub(*) (the mu ZR), betraying the influence of local factors in determining Z sub(*). This shows that both local ( mu sub(*)-driven) and global (M sub(*)-driven) processes are important in determining metallicity in galaxies. We find that the overall balance between local and global effects varies with the location within a galaxy. In disks, mu sub(*) regulates Z sub(*), producing a strong mu ZR whose amplitude is modulated by M sub(*). In spheroids it is M sub(*) that dominates the physics of star formation and chemical enrichment, with mu sub(*) playing a minor, secondary role. These findings agree with our previous analysis of the star formation histories of CALIFA galaxies, which showed that mean stellar ages are mainly governed by surface density in galaxy disks and by total mass in spheroids.
The star formation rate (SFR) is one of the main parameters used to analyze the evolution of galaxies through time. Integral field spectroscopy (IFS) is clearly the way to overcome this kind of ...limitation. We obtain integrated Halpha, ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR)-based SFR measurements for 272 galaxies from the C ALIFA survey at 0.005 < z < 0.03 using single-band and hybrid tracers. We aim to determine whether the extinction-corrected Halpha luminosities provide a good measure of the SFR and to shed light on the origin of the discrepancies between tracers. In the local Universe, the Halpha luminosity derived from IFS observations can be used to measure SFR, at least in statistically-significant, optically-selected galaxy samples, once stellar continuum absorption and dust attenuation effects are accounted for. The analysis of the SFR calibrations by galaxies properties could potentially be used by other works to study the impact of different selection criteria in the SFR values derived, and to disentangle selection effects from other physically motivated differences, such as environmental or evolutionary effects.
Aims.
Star-forming galaxies with nebular He
II
emission contain very energetic ionizing sources of radiation, which can be considered as analogs to the major contributors of the reionization of the ...Universe in early epochs. It is therefore of great importance to provide a reliable absolute scale for the equivalent effective temperature (
T
*
) for these sources.
Methods.
We study a sample of local (
z
< 0.2) star-forming galaxies showing optical nebular He
II
emission using the so-called softness diagrams, involving emission lines of two elements in two consecutive stages of ionization (e.g., S
II
/S
III
vs. O
II
/O
III
). We use for the first time the He
I
/He
II
ratio in these diagrams in order to explore the higher range of
T
*
expected in these objects, and to investigate the role of possible mechanisms driving the distribution of galaxy points in these diagrams. We build grids of photoionization models covering different black-body temperatures, model cluster atmospheres, and density-bounded geometries to explain the conditions observed in the sample.
Results.
We verified that the use of the softness diagrams including the emission-line ratio He
I
/He
II
combined with black-body photoionization models can provide an absolute scale of
T
*
for these objects. The application of a Bayesian-like code indicates
T
*
in the range 50−80 kK for the sample of galaxies, with a mean value higher than 60 kK. The average of these high temperature values can only be reproduced using cluster model populations with nearly metal-free stars, although such ionizing sources cannot explain either the highest
T
*
values, beyond 1
σ
, or the dispersion observed in the softness diagrams. According to our photoionization models, most sample galaxies could be affected to some extent by ionizing photon leaking, presenting a mean photon absorption fraction of 26% or higher depending on the metallicity assumed for the ionizing cluster. The entire range of He
I
/He
II
, S
II
/S
III
, and O
II
/O
III
ratios for these HeII-emitting galaxies is reproduced with our models, combining nearly metal-free ionizing clusters and photon leaking under different density-bounded conditions.
We present the largest and most homogeneous catalog of H ii regions and associations compiled so far. The catalog comprises more than 7000 ionized regions, extracted from 306 galaxies observed by the ...CALIFA survey. We describe the procedures used to detect, select, and analyze the spectroscopic properties of these ionized regions. In the current study we focus on characterizing of the radial gradient of the oxygen abundance in the ionized gas, based on the study of the deprojecteddistribution of H ii regions. We found that all galaxies without clear evidence of an interaction present a common gradient in the oxygen abundance, with a characteristic slope of αO/H = −0.1 dex/re between 0.3 and 2 disk effective radii (re), and a scatter compatible with random fluctuations around this value, when the gradient is normalized to the disk effective radius. The slope is independent of morphology, the incidence of bars, absolute magnitude, or mass. Only those galaxies with evidence of interactions and/or clear merging systems present a significantly shallower gradient, consistent with previous results. The majority of the 94 galaxies with H ii regions detected beyond two disk effective radii present a flattening in the oxygen abundance. The flattening is statistically significant. We cannot provide a conclusive answer regarding the origin of this flattening. However, our results indicate that its origin is most probably related to the secular evolution of galaxies. Finally, we find a drop/truncation of the oxygen abundance in the inner regions for 26 of the galaxies. All of them are non-interacting, mostly unbarred Sb/Sbc galaxies. This feature is associated with a central star-forming ring, which suggests that both features are produced by radial gas flows induced by resonance processes. Our result suggests that galaxy disks grow inside-out, with metal enrichment driven by the local star formation history and with a small variation galaxy-by-galaxy. At a certain galactocentric distance, the oxygen abundance seems to be correlated well with the stellar mass density and total stellar mass of the galaxies, independently of other properties of the galaxies. Other processes, such as radial mixing and inflows/outflows seem to have a limited effect on shaping of the radial distribution of oxygen abundances, although they are not ruled out.
The metallicity of a supernova progenitor, together with its mass, is one of the main parameters that can rule the progenitor's fate. We present the second study of nearby supernova (SN) host ...galaxies (0.005 < z< 0.03) using integral field spectroscopy (IFS) from the CALIFA survey. We analyze the metallicity of 115 galaxies, which hosted 132 SNe within and 10 SNe outside the field of view (FoV) of the instrument. Another 18 galaxies, which hosted only SNe outside the FoV, were also studied. Using the O3N2 calibrator that was described elsewhere, we found no statistically significant differences between the gas-phase metallicities at the locations of the three main SN types - Ia, Ib/c and II; they all have 12 + log(O/H) = 8.50 within 0.02 dex. The total galaxy metallicities are also very similar, and we argue that the reason is that our sample only consists of SNe discovered in massive galaxies (log(M/M sub(middot in circle)) > 10 dex) by targeted searches. We neither found evidence that the metallicity at the SN location differs from the average metallicity at the galactocentric distance of the SNe. By extending our SN sample with published metallicities at the SN location, we are able to study the metallicity distributions for all SN subtypes split into SN discovered in targeted and untargeted searches. We confirm a bias toward higher host masses and metallicities in the targeted searches. By combining data from targeted and untargeted searches, we found a sequence from higher to lower local metallicity: SN Ia, Ic, and II show the highest metallicity, which is significantly higher than those of SN Ib, IIb, and Ic-BL. Our results support the scenario according to which SN Ib result from binary progenitors. Additionally, at least part of the SN Ic are the result of single massive stars that were stripped of their outer layers by metallicity-driven winds. We studied several proxies of the local metallicity that are frequently used in the literature and found that the total host metallicity allows estimating the metallicity at the SN location with an accuracy better than 0.08 dex and very small bias. In addition, weak AGNs that cannot be seen in the total spectrum may weakly bias (by 0.04 dex) the metallicity estimate that is derived from the galaxy-integrated spectrum.
In the years to come, the Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerated Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) will observe 8000 deg
2
of the northern sky with 56 photometric bands. J-PAS is ideal for the ...detection of nebular emission objects. This paper presents a new method based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) that is aimed at measuring and detecting emission lines in galaxies up to
z
= 0.35. These lines are essential diagnostics for understanding the evolution of galaxies through cosmic time. We trained and tested ANNs with synthetic J-PAS photometry from CALIFA, MaNGA, and SDSS spectra. To this aim, we carried out two tasks. First, we clustered galaxies in two groups according to the values of the equivalent width (EW) of H
α
, H
β
, N
II
, and O
III
lines measured in the spectra. Then we trained an ANN to assign a group to each galaxy. We were able to classify them with the uncertainties typical of the photometric redshift measurable in J-PAS. Second, we utilized another ANN to determine the values of those EWs. Subsequently, we obtained the N
II
/H
α
, O
III
/H
β
, and O 3N 2 ratios, recovering the BPT diagram (O
III
/H
β
versus N
II
/H
α
). We studied the performance of the ANN in two training samples: one is only composed of synthetic J-PAS photo-spectra (J-spectra) from MaNGA and CALIFA (CALMa set) and the other one is composed of SDSS galaxies. We were able to fully reproduce the main sequence of star-forming galaxies from the determination of the EWs. With the CALMa training set, we reached a precision of 0.092 and 0.078 dex for the N
II
/H
α
and O
III
/H
β
ratios in the SDSS testing sample. Nevertheless, we find an underestimation of those ratios at high values in galaxies hosting an active galactic nuclei. We also show the importance of the dataset used for both training and testing the model. Such ANNs are extremely useful for overcoming the limitations previously expected concerning the detection and measurements of the emission lines in such surveys as J-PAS. Furthermore, we show the capability of the method to measure a EW of 10 Å in H
α
, H
β
, N
II
and O
III
lines with a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 5, 1.5, 3.5, and 10, respectively, in the photometry. Finally, we compare the properties of emission lines in galaxies observed with miniJPAS and SDSS. Despite the limitation of such a comparison, we find a remarkable correlation in their EWs.
We use optical integral-field spectroscopic (IFS) data from 103 nearby galaxies at different stages of the merging event, from close pairs to merger remnants provided by the CALIFA survey, to study ...the impact of the interaction in the specific star formation and oxygen abundance on different galactic scales. To disentangle the effect of the interaction and merger from internal processes, we compared our results with a control sample of 80 non-interacting galaxies. We confirm the moderate enhancement (×2–3 times) of specific star formation for interacting galaxies in central regions as reported by previous studies; however, the specific star formation is comparable when observed in extended regions. We find that control and interacting star-forming galaxies have similar oxygen abundances in their central regions, when normalized to their stellar masses. Oxygen abundances of these interacting galaxies seem to decrease compared to the control objects at the large aperture sizes measured in effective radius. Although the enhancement in central star formation and lower metallicities for interacting galaxies have been attributed to tidally induced inflows, our results suggest that other processes such as stellar feedback can contribute to the metal enrichment in interacting galaxies.
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