IA/U.Porto Seminar - Metallicity and evolution of star-forming galaxies populating different environments - 26 abril 2018

Metallicity offers a key constraint for our understanding of galaxy evolution, providing useful information to study the mechanisms driving massive gas infall along the process of galaxy formation. The spatial distribution of the chemical abundances in galaxies follow a tight relation with their stellar and gaseous mass components, building the galaxy metals budget and driving their chemical evolution. The star formation activity and the evolution of galaxies result also affected by their environment; thus, when observing galaxies in e.g. the densest locations, like galaxy groups and clusters, the stronger changes are expected to be observed, whereas truly isolated galaxies should witness the physical conditions reminiscent of those prevailing during the formation process. We have studied how these environmental effects should have translated into some metallicity footprints and star formation indicators. We have derived physical conditions and chemical abundances for star-forming galaxies inhabiting extreme density environments. We show recent observational results on the star formation, chemical abundances and evolution of galaxies populating environments of different galaxy density, placing them in the context of recent simulations and models of galaxy evolution.