Inflow-driven galaxy evolution - I. Revealing the physics of the fundamental metallicity relation

arXiv:2608.04784 · astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-08-05 · Read on arXiv

Kai Wang, Carlton Baugh, N. F. Boardman, Sownak Bose, Zheng Cai, Shaun Cole, Carlos S. Frenk, Cedric Lacey, Peder Norberg, Yingjie Peng, Isabel Santos-Santos, Amélie Saintonge, Tom Theuns, Enci Wang

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-08-05

Comments: 29 pages, 17 + 2 figures. Presents a unified framework for the fundamental metallicity relation, with a physical picture in Sec. 3, an analytic derivation in Sec. 4, and a comparison to previous models and observations in Sec. 5

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Metallicity — 240× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Anti-correlation — 15× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Degeneracy — 15× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Calibration — 12× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• AGN — 9× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• AGN Feedback — 8× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Trace — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Stellar Feedback — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Abundance — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Decoupling — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Star Formation Rate (SFR) — 3× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Unified Framework — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Accuracy — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Alignment — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Robustness — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Science and Technologies Facilities Council — 1× in this paper
• Star Formation Efficiency (SFE) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

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