MAUVE-MUSE: The Origin of the SFR–Metallicity Correlation (KDESci Group Meeting 226th)
ABSTRACT
On resolved scales, gas-phase metallicity is known to depend not only on stellar mass surface density, but also on local star formation activity. However, the physical origin of this secondary dependence remains debated, and most previous studies have been limited to kiloparsec-scale resolution. In this talk, I will present results from MAUVE-MUSE, which resolves late-type Virgo galaxies down to ∼100 pc scales and allows us to probe the interplay between local stellar mass, star formation, and chemical enrichment in unprecedented detail. I show that the metallicity–SFR coupling is not monotonic: at low Σ⋆, regions with enhanced star formation tend to be metal-poor, whereas at high Σ⋆, they tend to be metal-rich. The transition occurs around log(Σ⋆/M⊙ kpc−2)∼7.5–8.0, and correlated and anti-correlated H II regions can coexist within the same galaxy. To interpret this behaviour, I introduce a spatially resolved gas-regulator framework based on gas and metal continuity equations, and show that the observed sign change can be understood as a transition between gas-supply/dilution-dominated variability and star-formation/enrichment-dominated variability.
