1110.5862 (Drew Brisbin et al.)

Galaxy Mass, Metallicity, Radius and Star Formation Rates    [PDF]

Drew Brisbin, Martin Harwit

Working with 108,786 Sloan Digital Sky Survey low redshift galaxies, we have examined the relation between galaxy mass, metallicity, radius, and star formation rates. We subdivided the redshift range covered in our sample 0.072.8E10 Msun and exhibit high metallicities at high star formation rates, suggesting that for these galaxies star formation independent of mass infall plays a significant role. A toy model for the physics of infall accounts for the SFR Mi^(3/2) relation and permits us to estimate the mean densities and velocities of clumps of baryonic matter traversing the dark matter halos in which the SDSS galaxies may be embedded. The model also reproduces the gross features of the galaxy main sequence.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.5862