The Evolution of the Mass—Metallicity Relation in Seyferts

摘要

Various studies have shown that there is an empirical relation between the nebular metallicity of a galaxy and its stellar mass. Until now, most studies of the mass-metallicity relation (M–Z) have focused on the abundances of the interstellar medium as measured by emission-line features. This technique thus excludes galaxies with AGN from the working samples, due to the difficulty to measure the nebular abundances when emission-lines are powered both by stars and AGN. With our synthesis code STARLIGHT, we are able to recover the stellar metallicities of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Therefore, although we still cannot measure the nebular metallicity in AGN hosts, we know their present-day stellar metallicities. Moreover, because we measure the metallicity of stellar populations of different ages in a galaxy, we are also able also recover the history of its chemical enrichment.