SDSS-V LVM: Spatial Resolution Effects on Diagnostic Diagrams in the Magellanic Clouds

@misc{lugoaranda2026sdssv,
  title = {{SDSS-V LVM: Spatial Resolution Effects on Diagnostic Diagrams in the Magellanic Clouds}},
  author = {A. Z. Lugo-Aranda and Lesly C. Castañeda and H. J. Ibarra-Medel and C. Román-Zúñiga and J. E. Méndez-Delgado and Sebastián F. Sánchez and Rodolfo de J. Zermeño and Mónica A. Villa-Durango and Irene Cruz-González and Aida Wofford and Oskar Aranguré and G. A. Blanc and Priyanka Chakraborty and Evgeniya Egorova and Oleg V. Egorov and Thomas Hilder and Evelyn J. Johnston and Amy M. Jones and P. Jiménez-Hernández and K. Kreckel and Alfredo J. Mejía-Narváez and Christophe Morisset and Rogelio Orozco-Duarte and Alexandre Roman-Lopes and José G. Fernández-Trincado},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.08336},
  eprint = {2611.08336},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08336},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - SDSS-V LVM: Spatial Resolution Effects on Diagnostic Diagrams in the Magellanic Clouds
AU  - A. Z. Lugo-Aranda
AU  - Lesly C. Castañeda
AU  - H. J. Ibarra-Medel
AU  - C. Román-Zúñiga
AU  - J. E. Méndez-Delgado
AU  - Sebastián F. Sánchez
AU  - Rodolfo de J. Zermeño
AU  - Mónica A. Villa-Durango
AU  - Irene Cruz-González
AU  - Aida Wofford
AU  - Oskar Aranguré
AU  - G. A. Blanc
AU  - Priyanka Chakraborty
AU  - Evgeniya Egorova
AU  - Oleg V. Egorov
AU  - Thomas Hilder
AU  - Evelyn J. Johnston
AU  - Amy M. Jones
AU  - P. Jiménez-Hernández
AU  - K. Kreckel
AU  - Alfredo J. Mejía-Narváez
AU  - Christophe Morisset
AU  - Rogelio Orozco-Duarte
AU  - Alexandre Roman-Lopes
AU  - José G. Fernández-Trincado
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/05
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.08336
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08336
AB  - We investigate how spatial resolution affects emission-line diagnostics in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC) using SDSS Local Volume Mapper (LVM) data obtained at and degraded to 19, 42, 170 pc (for the SMC) and 17, 68, 272 pc (for the LMC), respectively. We compare the distributions of strong emission-line ratios through 1D and 2D Kolmogorov Smirnov tests. We deduced that diagnostics involving ionization and density sensitive ratios such as [OIII]λ5007/H\b{eta}, [SII]λλ6717+6731/Hα and [NII]λ6584/Hα are the most strongly impacted by resolution loss in this order. The SMC shows significant deviations even from intermediate scales (42 pc), whereas for the LMC, the coarsest resolution (272 pc) remains relatively stable, indicating that the SMC is intrinsically more affected by spatial mixing. Resolution degradation produces a marked homogenization effect: extreme values present at the finest scales are progressively diluted, causing diagnostic diagrams to converge toward their mean loci. Diffuse ionized gas is particularly sensitive to this mixing, while Hα selected ionized regions exhibit more robust behavior across resolutions. The sensitivity of diagnostic diagrams involving emission-line ratios, equivalent widths, and kinematic properties varies with both spatial resolution and galaxy, with the SMC generally showing stronger changes than the LMC. Our results demonstrate that sub-50 pc resolution is required to resolve the detailed structure of low-metallicity galaxies, and they highlight at least the need for careful interpretation of line-ratio diagnostics in extragalactic studies where coarse spatial resolution is unavoidable.
ER  -