The influence of galactic winds on the Mass-Metallicity Relation

DE ROSSI, MARÍA EMILIA; TISSERA, PATRICIA BEATRIZ

Santiago de Chile

Workshop; Supercomputing Techniques in Astrophysics; 2010

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

The mass-metallicity relation (MZR) is one of the fundamental relation of galaxies as it could provide clues about two important physical processes such as the star formation history and chemical enrichment of galactic systems. In the Local Universe, this relation seems to extend 5 decades in stellar mass and 2 dex in metallicity (Tremonti et al. 2004; Lee et al. 2006) in the sense that more massive galaxies exhibit larger chemical abundances. Moreover, recent studies have showed that the MZR evolves with time so that systems with similar stellar masses are less enriched at higher redshifts(e.g. Maiolino et al. 2008).   In this work, we study the chemo-dynamical evolution of galaxies by performing numerical hydrodynamical simulations in a cosmological scenario. We focus mainly on the role of galactic winds on the regulation of the evolution of the MZR and the chemical enrichment of the intergalactic medium.