Evolution of the metal content of galaxies in a simulated Lambda-CDM universe

DE ROSSI, MARÍA EMILIA; THEUNS, TOM; FONT, ANDREEA S.; MCCARTHY, IAN G.

Workshop; Third Workshop on Numerical and Observational Astrophysics: Linking the Local Universe to the Early One; 2014

In the last decade, different research projects have tried to find links between the chemical and dynamical properties of galaxies with the aim at finding clues to their evolution. In this context, the study of mass-metallicity relation (MZR) is crucial because both the star formation history and the dynamics of the ensuing galactic winds are tied to the growth of the galaxy´s potential well.In this work, we present results about the chemical evolution of galaxies in the Galaxies Intergalactic Medium Interaction Calculation (GIMIC) suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. The simulated MZR is studied for galaxies with stellar masses  10^9  - 5 x 10^10 Mo.  Simulated galaxies exhibit a tight correlation between metallicity and stellar mass in the sense that more massive systems are more metal-enriched, in agreement with observations.   According to our results, the chemical enrichment of galaxies is mainly regulated by the combined action of galactic winds, star formation and gas infall (De Rossi et al. 2014). In this work, we discuss about the relative impact of these processes on the features obtained for the simulated MZR.