40) The formation of radial metallicity profiles in Milky Way Analogues: Insights from L-Galaxies 2020 and MaNGA

Abstract: There is now a plethora of data available on the distribution of metals and other properties in the gas and stars of nearby disc galaxies from IFSs such as SAMI, MaNGA, and MUSE. These ground-breaking data now require careful interpretation, in order for us to properly understand the physical processes causing the distributions we see. In this talk, I will present the latest results on the formation of radial metallicity profiles in the L-Galaxies 2020 semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. L-Galaxies 2020 allows the modelling of many millions of galaxies from very high redshift to the present day, and includes (a) H2 formation and H2-dependent star formation, (b) delayed chemical enrichment of various alpha and iron-peak elements from stellar winds and supernovae, and (c) radially-resolved gas and stellar discs, probing down to sub-kpc scales in their centres. These enhancements, along with its efficiency and cosmological size, make L-Galaxies 2020 perfectly suited to interpreting IFS data on chemical gradients, by studying the complex interplay between star formation, galactic winds, radial migration, radial gas flows, galaxy mergers, and pre-enriched accretion on sub-kpc to kpc scales. In particular, I will focus on the chemistry of the stellar populations in Milky Way Analogue galaxies (MWAs). MWAs extracted from the MaNGA catalogue will be carefully compared to large samples of MWAs from L-Galaxies 2020, in order to understand (a) what processes drive the chemical gradients seen in these systems, and (b) whether the Milky Way itself is representative of this class of galaxies, and why.

Bio: Hello! I am a research fellow working on the chemical evolution of galaxies at the University of Surrey. I obtained my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in 2014, and my Masters degree in physics from Imperial College London.
My main research interests are in galaxy formation modelling and observations, in particular the chemical evolution of star-forming galaxies like the Milky Way, ellipticals, and galaxy clusters. I am a main developer of the L-Galaxies semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution, and am currently using this model to interpret spectroscopic data from integral field units (IFUs).