Central star formation and metallicity in CALIFA interacting galaxies

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 galacti...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Barrera-Ballesteros, J. K., Sánchez, S. F., García-Lorenzo, B., Falcón-Barroso, J., Mast, D., García-Benito, Rubén, Husemann, B., van de Ven, G., Iglesias-Páramo, J., Rosales-Ortega, F. F., Pérez-Torres, Miguel A., Márquez, Isabel, Kehrig, C., Marino, R. A., Vílchez Medina, José Manuel, Galbany, L., López-Sánchez, Á. R., Walcher, C. J., CALIFA Collaboration
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2015
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/385291
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/385291
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Galaxies: evolution
Galaxies: interactions
Galaxies: star formation
Galaxies: abundances
Description
Summary: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. © ESO, 2015.

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