Sub-kpc Scale Analysis of Stellar Chemical Abundance and Star Formation Distributions in Nearby Galaxies

Abstract

Nearby galaxies provide critical insights into the complex chemical and stellar evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. High-quality resolved measurements provide insight into the intrinsic details of evolution when investigating the stellar population and chemical abundance in the bulge and disk regions. Furthermore, this allows us to compare the radial distribution properties of different galaxies to examine their recent evolution, especially among distinct galaxies. In this work, we utilize integral field unit spectroscopy (IFS) and high-resolution stellar photometry to examine the distribution of nearby galaxies. We first investigate the radial distribution of stellar population, star formation, and oxygen abundance in centrally star-forming galaxies with photometrically red disks, termed BreakBRD galaxies, compared to the parent sample using the MaNGA IFS survey. We find that the BreakBRD galaxies exhibit a significant positive stellar population age profile but show no significant variation in stellar mass surface density, star formation surface density, or oxygen abundance. We estimate the RGB metallicity gradient of M31's northern and southern halves from the PHAT and PHAST surveys, respectively, and find a shallow negative gradient in both halves. We interpret this result as indicating that the older RGB stellar population is well mixed throughout the disk. Additionally, we have developed a photometry pipeline for future flagship surveys and used high-quality MaNGA data with a high-performance deep learning model to test prediction accuracy for recovering the ionization source.