Bibcode
Barrera-Ballesteros, J. K.; Sanchez, Sebastian; Garcia-Lorenzo, B.; Falcon-Barroso, J.
Bibliographical reference
IAU General Assembly, Meeting #29, #2245583
Advertised on:
8
2015
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
One of the main mechanisms to increase star formation activity is
through galaxy interactions. Tidal induced inflows of metal-poor
material are responsible of this enhancement, which in turns are thought
to be the driver of metallicity dilution observed in central regions of
interacting galaxies. Thanks to the spatially resolved data from 103
galaxies included in the CALIFA survey, we are able to probe the star
formation and ionized gas oxygen abundance at different galactic scales
and at different interaction stages. These results are compared
homogeneously with a control sample of 80 isolated galaxies from the
same survey. We find that star formation is moderately enhanced in
central regions of interacting galaxies compared with control galaxies
(~factor of 2). Even more, interacting and control galaxies share
similar metallicities. Our results suggest that although inflows play
the main role in the enhancement of the central star formation in
interacting galaxies, other processes such as stellar feedback could
induce a chemical enrichment leading to central metallicities similar as
those observed in isolated galaxies.