Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients
Metallicity gradients are important diagnostics of galaxy evolution, because they record the history of events such as mergers, gas inflow and star-formation. However, the accuracy with which gradients can be measured is limited by spatial resolution and noise, and hence measurements need to be corr...
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ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.2004.09482 2023-05-15T18:12:48+02:00 Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients Acharyya, Ayan Krumholz, Mark R. Federrath, Christoph Kewley, Lisa J. Goldbaum, Nathan J. Sharp, Rob 2020 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2004.09482 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09482 unknown arXiv https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1100 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 CC-BY Astrophysics of Galaxies astro-ph.GA FOS Physical sciences article-journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2020 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2004.09482 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1100 2022-03-10T15:48:39Z Metallicity gradients are important diagnostics of galaxy evolution, because they record the history of events such as mergers, gas inflow and star-formation. However, the accuracy with which gradients can be measured is limited by spatial resolution and noise, and hence measurements need to be corrected for such effects. We use high resolution (~20 pc) simulation of a face-on Milky Way mass galaxy, coupled with photoionisation models, to produce a suite of synthetic high resolution integral field spectroscopy (IFS) datacubes. We then degrade the datacubes, with a range of realistic models for spatial resolution (2 to 16 beams per galaxy scale length) and noise, to investigate and quantify how well the input metallicity gradient can be recovered as a function of resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with the intention to compare with modern IFS surveys like MaNGA and SAMI. Given appropriate propagation of uncertainties and pruning of low SNR pixels, we show that a resolution of 3-4 telescope beams per galaxy scale length is sufficient to recover the gradient to ~10-20% uncertainty. The uncertainty escalates to ~60% for lower resolution. Inclusion of the low SNR pixels causes the uncertainty in the inferred gradient to deteriorate. Our results can potentially inform future IFS surveys regarding the resolution and SNR required to achieve a desired accuracy in metallicity gradient measurements. : 21 pages, 11 figures, 20 pages Supplementary Online Material provided with 10 additional figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Article in Journal/Newspaper sami DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Milky Way ENVELOPE(-68.705,-68.705,-71.251,-71.251) |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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topic |
Astrophysics of Galaxies astro-ph.GA FOS Physical sciences |
spellingShingle |
Astrophysics of Galaxies astro-ph.GA FOS Physical sciences Acharyya, Ayan Krumholz, Mark R. Federrath, Christoph Kewley, Lisa J. Goldbaum, Nathan J. Sharp, Rob Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
topic_facet |
Astrophysics of Galaxies astro-ph.GA FOS Physical sciences |
description |
Metallicity gradients are important diagnostics of galaxy evolution, because they record the history of events such as mergers, gas inflow and star-formation. However, the accuracy with which gradients can be measured is limited by spatial resolution and noise, and hence measurements need to be corrected for such effects. We use high resolution (~20 pc) simulation of a face-on Milky Way mass galaxy, coupled with photoionisation models, to produce a suite of synthetic high resolution integral field spectroscopy (IFS) datacubes. We then degrade the datacubes, with a range of realistic models for spatial resolution (2 to 16 beams per galaxy scale length) and noise, to investigate and quantify how well the input metallicity gradient can be recovered as a function of resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with the intention to compare with modern IFS surveys like MaNGA and SAMI. Given appropriate propagation of uncertainties and pruning of low SNR pixels, we show that a resolution of 3-4 telescope beams per galaxy scale length is sufficient to recover the gradient to ~10-20% uncertainty. The uncertainty escalates to ~60% for lower resolution. Inclusion of the low SNR pixels causes the uncertainty in the inferred gradient to deteriorate. Our results can potentially inform future IFS surveys regarding the resolution and SNR required to achieve a desired accuracy in metallicity gradient measurements. : 21 pages, 11 figures, 20 pages Supplementary Online Material provided with 10 additional figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Acharyya, Ayan Krumholz, Mark R. Federrath, Christoph Kewley, Lisa J. Goldbaum, Nathan J. Sharp, Rob |
author_facet |
Acharyya, Ayan Krumholz, Mark R. Federrath, Christoph Kewley, Lisa J. Goldbaum, Nathan J. Sharp, Rob |
author_sort |
Acharyya, Ayan |
title |
Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
title_short |
Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
title_full |
Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
title_fullStr |
Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
title_full_unstemmed |
Quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
title_sort |
quantifying the effects of spatial resolution and noise on galaxy metallicity gradients |
publisher |
arXiv |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2004.09482 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09482 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-68.705,-68.705,-71.251,-71.251) |
geographic |
Milky Way |
geographic_facet |
Milky Way |
genre |
sami |
genre_facet |
sami |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1100 |
op_rights |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2004.09482 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1100 |
_version_ |
1766185281936949248 |