Chemical abundances in a UV-selected sample of galaxies

Abstract

We discuss the chemical properties of a sample of UV-selected intermediate-redshift (0≲z≲0.4) galaxies in the context of their physical nature and star-formation history. This work represents an extension of our previous studies of the rest-frame UV-luminosity function (Treyer et al.) and the star-formation properties of the same sample (Sullivan et al.). We revisit the optical spectra of these galaxies and perform further emission-line measurements restricting the analysis to those spectra with the full set of emission lines required to derive chemical abundances. Our final sample consists of 68 galaxies with heavy-element abundance ratios and both UV and CCD B-band photometry. Diagnostics based on emission-line ratios show that all but one of the galaxies in our sample are powered by hot, young stars rather than by an AGN. Oxygen-to-hydrogen (O/H) and nitrogen-to-oxygen (N/O) abundance ratios are compared with those of various local and intermediate-redshift samples. Our UV-selected galaxies span a wide range of oxygen abundances, from ∼0.1 to 1 Z⊙, intermediate between low-mass H II galaxies and massive starburst nuclei. For a given oxygen abundance, most have strikingly low N/O values. Moreover, UV-selected and H II galaxies systematically deviate from the usual metallicity–luminosity relation in the sense of being more luminous by 2–3 mag. Adopting the ‘delayed-release’ chemical evolution model, we propose our UV-selected sources are observed at a special stage in their evolution, following a powerful starburst that enriched their ISM in oxygen and temporarily lowered their mass-to-light ratios. We discuss briefly the implications of our conclusions on the nature of similarly selected high-redshift galaxies.