P-MaNGA Galaxies: emission-lines properties - gas ionization and chemical abundances from prototype observations

Belfiore, F.; Maiolino, R.; Bundy, K.; Thomas, D.; Maraston, C.; Wilkinson, D.; Sánchez, S. F.; Bershady, M.; Blanc, G. A.; Bothwell, M.; Cales, S. L.; Coccato, L.; Drory, N.; Emsellem, E.; Fu, H.; Gelfand, J.; Law, D.; Masters, K.; Parejko, J.; Tremonti, C.; Wake, D.; Weijmans, A.; Yan, R.; Xiao, T.; Zhang, K.; Zheng, T.; Bizyaev, D.; Kinemuchi, K.; Oravetz, D. and Simmons, A. (2015). P-MaNGA Galaxies: emission-lines properties - gas ionization and chemical abundances from prototype observations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 449(1) pp. 867–900.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv296

Abstract

MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) is a 6-yr Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) survey that will obtain spatially resolved spectroscopy from 3600 to 10 300 Å for a representative sample of over 10 000 nearby galaxies. In this paper, we present the analysis of nebular emission-line properties using observations of 14 galaxies obtained with P-MaNGA, a prototype of the MaNGA instrument. By using spatially resolved diagnostic diagrams, we find extended star formation in galaxies that are centrally dominated by Seyfert/LINER-like emission, which illustrates that galaxy characterizations based on single fibre spectra are necessarily incomplete. We observe extended low ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINER)-like emission (up to 1Re) in the central regions of three galaxies. We make use of the Hα equivalent width [EW(Hα)] to argue that the observed emission is consistent with ionization from hot evolved stars. We derive stellar population indices and demonstrate a clear correlation between Dn(4000) and EW(HδA) and the position in the ionization diagnostic diagram: resolved galactic regions which are ionized by a Seyfert/LINER-like radiation field are also devoid of recent star formation and host older and/or more metal-rich stellar populations. We also detect extraplanar LINER-like emission in two highly inclined galaxies, and identify it with diffuse ionized gas. We investigate spatially resolved metallicities and find a positive correlation between metallicity and star formation rate surface density. We further study the relation between N/O versus O/H on resolved scales. We find that, at given N/O, regions within individual galaxies are spread towards lower metallicities, deviating from the sequence defined by galactic central regions as traced by Sloan 3-arcsec fibre spectra. We suggest that the observed dispersion can be a tracer for gas flows in galaxies: infalls of pristine gas and/or the effect of a galactic fountain.

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