EMPRESS. IX. Extremely Metal-poor Galaxies are Very Gas-rich Dispersion-dominated Systems: Will the James Webb Space Telescope Witness Gaseous Turbulent High-z Primordial Galaxies?
Abstract
We present kinematics of six local extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs) with low metallicities (0.016-0.098 Z ⊙) and low stellar masses (104.7-107.6 M ⊙). Taking deep medium/high-resolution (R ~ 7500) integral-field spectra with 8.2 m Subaru, we resolve the small inner velocity gradients and dispersions of the EMPGs with Hα emission. Carefully masking out substructures originating by inflow and/or outflow, we fit three-dimensional disk models to the observed Hα flux, velocity, and velocity dispersion maps. All the EMPGs show rotational velocities (v rot) of 5-23 km s-1 smaller than the velocity dispersions (σ 0) of 17-31 km s-1, indicating dispersion-dominated (v rot/σ 0 = 0.29-0.80 < 1) systems affected by inflow and/or outflow. Except for two EMPGs with large uncertainties, we find that the EMPGs have very large gas-mass fractions of f gas ≃ 0.9-1.0. Comparing our results with other Hα kinematics studies, we find that v rot/σ 0 decreases and f gas increases with decreasing metallicity, decreasing stellar mass, and increasing specific star formation rate. We also find that simulated high-z (z ~ 7) forming galaxies have gas fractions and dynamics similar to the observed EMPGs. Our EMPG observations and the simulations suggest that primordial galaxies are gas-rich dispersion-dominated systems, which would be identified by the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope observations at z ~ 7.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- July 2023
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-4357/accc87
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2206.04709
- Bibcode:
- 2023ApJ...951..102I
- Keywords:
-
- Galaxy formation;
- Galaxy structure;
- Star formation;
- Galaxy kinematics;
- Dwarf galaxies;
- 595;
- 622;
- 1569;
- 602;
- 416;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- ApJ in Press