A Relationship Between Stellar Metallicity Gradients and Galaxy Age in Dwarf Galaxies

Understand

We explore the origin of stellar metallicity gradients in simulated and observed dwarf galaxies.

• We use FIRE-2 cosmological baryonic zoom-in simulations of 26 isolated galaxies as well as existing observational data for 10 Local Group dwarf galaxies.
• Our simulated galaxies have stellar masses between $10^{5.5}$ and $10^{8.6} \msun$.
• Whilst gas-phase metallicty gradients are generally weak in our simulated galaxies, we find that stellar metallicity gradients are common, with central regions tending to be more metal-rich than the outer parts.