Effect of Recent Star Formation of Galaxies on their Chemical Abundance Estimation

We investigate the effect of recent star formation (RSF) on the α-elements-to-iron ratio ([α/Fe]) estimation for galaxies. Measuring galactic [α/Fe] is a powerful tool to pinpointing the timescale of chemical evolution and star formation. Our working hypothesis is that, with increasing stellar surface temperature, absorption equivalent width (EW) of α-elements decreases faster than that of Fe-peak elements, and thus RSF will lower the line ratio of EW(α)/EW(Fe). Moreover, young stars outshine, effectively lowering EW(α)/EW(Fe) of integrated light of RSF galaxies. Here we test our hypothesis using SDSS (optical spectrophotometric), GALEX (UV photometric) and IllustrisTNG datasets, and show that, if RSF is not considered thoroughly, EW(α)/EW(Fe) lowered by RSF can be routinely misinterpreted as low [α/Fe]. We discuss possible implications of the result in the context of the conventional [α/Fe]-mass relation of galaxies.