EMPRESS. IV. Extremely Metal-poor Galaxies Including Very Low-mass Primordial Systems with M= 104-105Mand 2%-3% (O/H): High (Fe/O) Suggestive of Metal Enrichment by Hypernovae/Pair-instability Supernovae

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Documents

  • Yuki Isobe
  • Masami Ouchi
  • Akihiro Suzuki
  • Takashi J. Moriya
  • Kimihiko Nakajima
  • Ken'Ichi Nomoto
  • Michael Rauch
  • Yuichi Harikane
  • Takashi Kojima
  • Yoshiaki Ono
  • Seiji Fujimoto
  • Akio K. Inoue
  • Ji Hoon Kim
  • Yutaka Komiyama
  • Haruka Kusakabe
  • Chien Hsiu Lee
  • Michael Maseda
  • Jorryt Matthee
  • Leo Michel-Dansac
  • Tohru Nagao
  • And 5 others
  • Themiya Nanayakkara
  • Moka Nishigaki
  • Masato Onodera
  • Yuma Sugahara
  • Yi Xu

We present Keck/LRIS follow-up spectroscopy for 13 photometric candidates of extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs) selected by a machine-learning technique applied to the deep (∼26 AB mag) optical and wide-area (∼500 deg2) Subaru imaging data in the EMPRESS survey. Nine out of the 13 candidates are EMPGs with an oxygen abundance (O/H) less than ∼10% solar value (O/H)⊙, and four sources are contaminants of moderately metal-rich galaxies or no emission-line objects. Notably, two out of the nine EMPGs have extremely low stellar masses and oxygen abundances of 5 × 104-7 × 105 M⊙ and 2%-3% (O/H)⊙, respectively. With a sample of five EMPGs with (Fe/O) measurements, two (three) of which are taken from this study (the literature), we confirm that two EMPGs with the lowest (O/H) ratios of ∼2% (O/H)⊙ show high (Fe/O) ratios of ∼0.1, close to the solar abundance ratio. Comparing galaxy chemical enrichment models, we find that the two EMPGs cannot be explained by a scenario of metal-poor gas accretion/episodic star formation history due to their low (N/O) ratios. We conclude that the two EMPGs can be reproduced by the inclusion of bright hypernovae and/or hypothetical pair-instability supernovae (SNe) preferentially produced in a metal-poor environment. This conclusion implies that primordial galaxies at z ∼10 could have a high abundance of Fe that did not originate from Type Ia SNe with delays and that Fe may not serve as a cosmic clock for primordial galaxies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number111
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume925
Issue number2
Number of pages18
ISSN0004-637X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2022

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© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

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