The stellar chemical abundances of simulated massive galaxies at z = 2

Abstract

ABSTRACT We analyse the stellar abundances of massive galaxies (log M*/M⊙ > 10.5) at redshift, z = 2, in the IllustrisTNG simulation with the goal of guiding the interpretation of current and future observations, particularly from JWST. We find that the effective size, Re, of galaxies strongly affects the abundance measurements: both [Mg/H] and [Fe/H] are anticorrelated with Re, while the relative abundance [Mg/Fe] slightly increases with Re. The α enhancement as tracked by [Mg/Fe] traces the formation time-scale of a galaxy weakly, and mostly depends on Re. Aperture effects are important: measuring the stellar abundances within 1 kpc instead of within Re can make a large difference. These results are all due to a nearly universal, steeply declining stellar abundance profile that does not scale with galaxy size – Small galaxies appear metal-rich because their stars live in the inner part of the profile where abundances are high. The slope of this profile is mostly set by the gas-phase abundance profile and not substantially modified by stellar age gradients. The gas-phase abundance profile, in turn, is determined by the strong radial dependence of the gas fraction and star-formation efficiency. We develop a simple model to describe the chemical enrichment, in which each radial bin of a galaxy is treated as an independent closed-box system. This model reproduces the gas-phase abundance profile of simulated galaxies, but not the detailed distribution of their stellar abundances, for which gas and/or metal transport are likely needed.