@article{11585,
  abstract     = {Observations show that star-forming galaxies reside on a tight three-dimensional plane between mass, gas-phase metallicity and star formation rate (SFR), which can be explained by the interplay between metal-poor gas inflows, SFR and outflows. However, different metals are released on different time-scales, which may affect the slope of this relation. Here, we use central, star-forming galaxies with Mstar = 109.0−10.5 M from the EAGLE hydrodynamical simulation to examine three-dimensional relations between mass, SFR and chemical enrichment using absolute and relative C, N, O and Fe abundances. We show that the scatter is smaller when gas-phase α-enhancement is used rather than metallicity. A similar plane also exists for stellar α-enhancement, implying that present-day specific SFRs are correlated with long time-scale star formation histories. Between z = 0 and 1, the α-enhancement plane is even more insensitive to redshift than the plane using metallicity. However, it evolves at z > 1 due to lagging iron yields. At fixed mass, galaxies with higher SFRs have star formation histories shifted toward late times, are more α-enhanced and this α-enhancement increases with redshift as observed. These findings suggest that relations between physical properties inferred from observations may be affected by systematic variations in α-enhancements.},
  author       = {Matthee, Jorryt J},
  issn         = {2397-3366},
  journal      = {Nature Astronomy},
  keywords     = {Astronomy and Astrophysics, galaxies, formation - galaxies, evolution - galaxies, star formation - galaxies, abundances},
  pages        = {984--985},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Differences in galaxy colours are not just about the mass}},
  doi          = {10.1038/s41550-021-01415-y},
  volume       = {5},
  year         = {2021},
}