The hELENa project - II. Abundance distribution trends of early-type galaxies: from dwarfs to giants

In this second paper of The role of Environment in shaping Low-mass Early-type Nearby galaxies (hELENa) series we study [Mg/Fe] abundance distribution trends of early-type galaxies observed with the SAURON integral field unit, spanning a wide range in mass and local environment densities: 20 low-mass early-types (dEs) of Sybilska et al. (2017) and 258 massive early types (ETGs) of the ATLAS^3D project, all homogeneously reduced and analyzed. We show that the [Mg/Fe] ratios scale with velocity dispersion (σ) at fixed [Fe/H] and that they evolve with [Fe/H] along similar paths for all early-types, grouped in bins of increasing local and global σ, as well as the second velocity moment V_rms, indicating a common inside-out formation pattern. We then place our dEs on the [Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] diagram of Local Group galaxies and show that dEs occupy the same region and show a similar trend line slope in the diagram as the high-metallicity stars of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud. This finding extends the similar trend found for dwarf spheroidal vs. dwarf irregular galaxies and supports the notion that dEs have evolved from late-type galaxies that have lost their gas at a point of their evolution, which likely coincided with them entering denser environments.