| 1. |
- Agertz, Oscar, et al.
(författare)
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Characterizing gravitational instability in turbulent multicomponent galactic discs
- 2015
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 449:2, s. 2156-2166
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gravitational instabilities play an important role in galaxy evolution and in shaping the interstellar medium (ISM). The ISM is observed to be highly turbulent, meaning that observables like the gas surface density and velocity dispersion depend on the size of the region over which they are measured. In this work, we investigate, using simulations of Milky Way-like disc galaxies with a resolution of ∼ 9 pc, the nature of turbulence in the ISM and how this affects the gravitational stability of galaxies. By accounting for the measured average turbulent scalings of the density and velocity fields in the stability analysis, we can more robustly characterize the average level of stability of the galaxies as a function of scale, and in a straightforward manner identify scales prone to fragmentation. Furthermore, we find that the stability of a disc with feedback-driven turbulence can be well described by a ‘Toomre-like' Q stability criterion on all scales, whereas the classical Q can formally lose its meaning on small scales if violent disc instabilities occur in models lacking pressure support from stellar feedback.
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| 2. |
- Agertz, Oscar, et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : The mass-metallicity relation as a critical test of galaxy formation physics
- 2020
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 491:2, s. 1656-1672
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We introduce the 'Engineering Dwarfs at Galaxy Formation's Edge' (EDGE) project to study the cosmological formation and evolution of the smallest galaxies in the Universe. In this first paper, we explore the effects of resolution and sub-grid physics on a single low-mass halo (Mhalo = 109M⊙), simulated to redshift z = 0 at amass and spatial resolution of ∼ 20 M⊙ and ∼3 pc. We consider different star formation prescriptions, supernova feedback strengths, and on-the-fly radiative transfer (RT). We show that RT changes the mode of galactic self-regulation at this halo mass, suppressing star formation by causing the interstellar and circumgalactic gas to remain predominantly warm (∼104K) even before cosmic reionization. By contrast, without RT, star formation regulation occurs only through starbursts and their associated vigorous galactic outflows. In spite of this difference, the entire simulation suite (with the exception of models without any feedback) matches observed dwarf galaxy sizes, velocity dispersions, V-band magnitudes, and dynamical mass-to-light-ratios. This is because such structural scaling relations are predominantly set by the host dark matter halo, with the remaining model-to-model variation being smaller than the observational scatter. We find that only the stellar mass-metallicity relation differentiates the galaxy formation models. Explosive feedback ejects more metals from the dwarf, leading to a lower metallicity at a fixed stellar mass. We conclude that the stellar mass-metallicity relation of the very smallest galaxies provides a unique constraint on galaxy formation physics.
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| 3. |
- Agertz, Oscar, et al.
(författare)
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THE IMPACT of STELLAR FEEDBACK on the STRUCTURE, SIZE, and MORPHOLOGY of GALAXIES in MILKY-WAY-SIZED DARK MATTER HALOS
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X. ; 824:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation in a Milky-Way-sized halo started from identical initial conditions to investigate the evolution of galaxy sizes, baryon fractions, morphologies, and angular momenta in runs with different parameters of the star formation-feedback cycle. Our fiducial model with a high local star formation efficiency, which results in efficient feedback, produces a realistic late-type galaxy that matches the evolution of basic properties of late-type galaxies: stellar mass, disk size, morphology dominated by a kinematically cold disk, stellar and gas surface density profiles, and specific angular momentum. We argue that feedback's role in this success is twofold: (1) removal of low angular momentum gas, and (2) maintaining a low disk-to-halo mass fraction, which suppresses disk instabilities that lead to angular momentum redistribution and a central concentration of baryons. However, our model with a low local star formation efficiency, but large energy input per supernova, chosen to produce a galaxy with a similar star formation history as our fiducial model, leads to a highly irregular galaxy with no kinematically cold component, overly extended stellar distribution, and low angular momentum. This indicates that only when feedback is allowed to become vigorous via locally efficient star formation in dense cold gas do resulting galaxy sizes, gas/stellar surface density profiles, and stellar disk angular momenta agree with observed z = 0 galaxies.
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| 4. |
- Agertz, Oscar, et al.
(författare)
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Vintergatan - i. The origins of chemically, kinematically, and structurally distinct discs in a simulated milky way-mass galaxy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 503:4, s. 5826-5845
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way's stars have revealed spatial, chemical, and kinematical structures that encode its history. In this work, we study their origins using a cosmological zoom simulation, VINTERGATAN, of a MilkyWay-mass disc galaxy. We find that in connection to the last major merger at z ∼ 1.5, cosmological accretion leads to the rapid formation of an outer, metal-poor, low-[α/Fe] gas disc around the inner, metal-rich galaxy containing the old high-[α/Fe] stars. This event leads to a bimodality in [α/Fe] over a range of [Fe/H]. A detailed analysis of how the galaxy evolves since z ∼ 1 is presented. We demonstrate the way in which inside-out growth shapes the radial surface density and metallicity profile and how radial migration preferentially relocates stars from the inner disc to the outer disc. Secular disc heating is found to give rise to increasing velocity dispersions and scale heights with stellar age, which together with disc flaring explains several trends observed in the MilkyWay, including shallower radial [Fe/H] profiles above the mid-plane.We show how the galaxy formation scenario imprints non-trivial mappings between structural associations (i.e. thick and thin discs), velocity dispersions, α-enhancements, and ages of stars; e.g. the most metal-poor stars in the low-[α/Fe] sequence are found to have a scale height comparable to old high-[α/Fe] stars. Finally, we illustrate how at low spatial resolution, comparable to the thickness of the galaxy, the proposed pathway to distinct sequences in [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] cannot be captured.
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| 5. |
- Agertz, Oscar, et al.
(författare)
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Virtual Universes
- 2011
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Ingår i: Tofsen. ; :4, s. 38-39
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 6. |
- Andersson, Eric P., et al.
(författare)
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INFERNO : Galactic winds in dwarf galaxies with star-by-star simulations including runaway stars
- 2023
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 521:2, s. 2196-2214
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The formation and evolution of galaxies have proved sensitive to the inclusion of stellar feedback, which is therefore crucial to any successful galaxy model. We present INFERNO, a new model for hydrodynamic simulations of galaxies, which incorporates resolved stellar objects with star-by-star calculations of when and where the injection of enriched material, momentum, and energy takes place. INFERNO treats early stellar kinematics to include phenomena such as walkaway and runaway stars. We employ this innovative model on simulations of a dwarf galaxy and demonstrate that our physically motivated stellar feedback model can drive vigorous galactic winds. This is quantified by mass and metal loading factors in the range of 10–100, and an energy loading factor close to unity. Outflows are established close to the disc, are highly multiphase, spanning almost 8 orders of magnitude in temperature, and with a clear dichotomy between mass ejected in cold, slow-moving (T ≲ 5 × 104 K, v < 100 km s-1) gas and energy ejected in hot, fast-moving (T > 106 K, v > 100 km s-1) gas. In contrast to massive disc galaxies, we find a surprisingly weak impact of the early stellar kinematics, with runaway stars having little to no effect on our results, despite exploding in diffuse gas outside the dense star-forming gas, as well as outside the galactic disc entirely. We demonstrate that this weak impact in dwarf galaxies stems from a combination of strong feedback and a porous interstellar medium, which obscure any unique signatures that runaway stars provide.
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| 7. |
- Andersson, Eric P., et al.
(författare)
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Pre-supernova feedback sets the star cluster mass function to a power law and reduces the cluster formation efficiency
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - 0004-6361. ; 681
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context. The star cluster initial mass function is observed to have an inverse power law exponent around 2, yet there is no consensus on what determines this distribution, and why some variation is observed in different galaxies. Furthermore, the cluster formation efficiency (CFE) covers a range of values, particularly when considering different environments. These clusters are often used to empirically constrain star formation and as fundamental units for stellar feedback models. Detailed galaxy models must therefore accurately capture the basic properties of observed clusters to be considered predictive. Aims. We study how feedback mechanisms acting on different timescales and with different energy budgets affect the star cluster mass function and CFE. Methods. We use hydrodynamical simulations of a dwarf galaxy as a laboratory to study star cluster formation. We test different combinations of stellar feedback mechanisms, including stellar winds, ionizing radiation, and supernovae (SNe). Results. Each feedback mechanism affects the CFE and cluster mass function. Increasing the feedback budget by combining the different types of feedback decreases the CFE by reducing the number of massive clusters. Ionizing radiation is found to be especially influential. This effect depends on the timing of feedback initiation, as shown by comparing early and late feedback. Early feedback occurs from ionizing radiation and stellar winds with onset immediately after a massive star is formed. Late feedback occurs when energy injection only starts after the main-sequence lifetime of the most massive SN progenitor, a timing that is further influenced by the choice of the most massive SN progenitor. Late feedback alone results in a broad, flat mass function, approaching a log-normal shape in the complete absence of feedback. Early feedback, on the other hand, produces a power-law cluster mass function with lower CFE, albeit with a steeper slope than that usually observed.
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| 8. |
- Andersson, Eric P., et al.
(författare)
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Runaway stars masquerading as star formation in galactic outskirts
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1745-3925 .- 1745-3933. ; 502:1, s. 29-34
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the outskirts of nearby spiral galaxies, star formation is observed in extremely low gas surface densities. Star formation in these regions, where the interstellar medium is dominated by diffuse atomic hydrogen, is difficult to explain with classic star formation theories. In this letter, we introduce runaway stars as an explanation for this observation. Runaway stars, produced by collisional dynamics in young stellar clusters, can travel kiloparsecs during their main-sequence lifetime. Using galactic-scale hydrodynamic simulations including a treatment of individual stars, we demonstrate that this mechanism enables the ejection of young massive stars into environments where the gas is not dense enough to trigger star formation. This results in the appearance of star formation in regions where it ought to be impossible. We conclude that runaway stars are a contributing, if not dominant, factor to the observations of star formation in the outskirts of spiral galaxies.
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| 9. |
- Bland-Hawthorn, Joss, et al.
(författare)
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The Rapid Onset of Stellar Bars in the Baryon-dominated Centers of Disk Galaxies
- 2023
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X. ; 947:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent observations of high-redshift galactic disks (z ≈ 1-3) show a strong negative trend in the dark-matter (DM) fraction f DM with increasing baryon surface density. For this to be true, the inner baryons must dominate over DM in early massive galaxies, as observed in the Milky Way today. If disks are dominant at early times, we show that stellar bars form promptly within these disks, leading to a high bar fraction. New James Webb Space Telescope observations provide the best evidence for mature stellar bars in this redshift range. The disk mass fraction f disk within R s = 2.2 R disk is the dominant factor determining how rapidly a bar forms. Using 3D hydro simulations of halo-bulge-disk galaxies, we confirm the “Fujii relation” for the exponential dependence of the bar formation time τ bar as a function of f disk. For f disk > 0.3, the bar formation time declines exponentially fast with increasing f disk. Instead of Fujii's arbitrary threshold for when a bar appears, for the first time, we exploit the exponential growth timescale associated with the positive feedback cycle as the bar emerges from the underlying disk. A modified, mass-dependent trend is observed for halos relevant to systems at cosmic noon ( 10.5 < log M halo < 12 ), where the bar onset is slower for higher-mass halos at a fixed f disk. If baryons dominate over DM within R ≈ R s, we predict that a high fraction of bars will be found in high-redshift disks long before z = 1.
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| 10. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy
(författare)
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Exploring the nature of ISM turbulencein disc galaxies
- 2024
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Galaxy formation is a continuous process that started only a few hundred million yearsafter the Big Bang. The first galaxies were very volatile, with bursts of star formationand disorganised gas motions. However, even as these galaxies evolved to have orderlyrotating gas discs, the gas within the disc, referred to as the interstellar medium (ISM),still remained highly turbulent. In fact, the ISM is supersonically turbulent, meaning thatthe disorganised gas motion exceeds the speed of sound in the medium. This supersonicturbulence has been connected to several crucial properties related to galaxy evolution; forexample, increasing (and decreasing in some regions) the ISM gas density, star formation,and gas mixing.Many observation have shown that all of the gas phases in the ISM experience su-personic levels of turbulence, with line widths (an observational method to quantify theamount of turbulence) as high as σg ≲ 100 km s−1 in high-redshift (younger) disc galaxies,while local quiescent discs have σg ≲ 40 km s−1 . However, the ISM contains a variety ofgas phases that cover a wide range of temperatures and densities, which exhibit differentlevels of turbulence. For example, the warm ionised gas phase represents the upper limitsquoted above, while colder denser gas only reaches σg ≲ 40 km s−1 and σg ≲ 15 km s−1 inhigh-redshift and local galaxies, respectively.The physical processes driving this turbulence are not fully understood, but a combi-nation of stellar feedback (e.g. supernova) and gravitational instability (e.g. during cloudcollapse) have been suggested to provide a majority of the turbulent energy. In particular,stellar feedback is crucial in the formation of warm ionised gas and may therefore have asignificant contribution on the turbulence within ionised gas. Furthermore, heterogeneousdata of widely different galaxies (in terms of e.g. mass and size) at different resolutions(which causes artificial line broadening) complicates understanding the underlying cause.A commonly used tracer of ionised gas is the Hα emission line and has been usedextensively in high-redshift surveys. However, the contribution of the Hα signal comesfrom two primary sources: the radiatively ionised regions around massive newborn starsembedded in molecular gas (called H II regions) and diffuse ionised gas (DIG) filling theentire galactic disc. Observations have found that these two sources contribute, on average,roughly the same amount to the Hα signal (although with a large spread), but the levelsof turbulence is starkly different; with the DIG being roughly 2-3 times more turbulethan the gas in H II regions.Numerical simulations have come a long way and are now able to simulate entire discgalaxies at parsec-scale resolution (in regions of interest). Furthermore, galaxy simulationshave been able to reproduce the level of turbulence observed in local and high-redshiftgalaxies. Direct comparisons between numerical and observational studies are crucial tounderstand the relevant physics driving observed correlations. However, numerical andobservational work have different data available and the reduction/analysis varies betweenauthors, and so diligence is required to perform qualitative comparisons.In this work, I perform numerical simulations to investigate ISM turbulence in differentgas phases. My simulations model a Milky Way-like galaxy at two different redshifts(using gas fraction as a proxy for redshift) and with/without stellar feedback physics, toevaluate its impact. I perform mock observations to explore the relation between the starformation rate and turbulence, and investigate what is driving this relation. Additionally, Ianalyse the Hα emission line and compare the contribution in intensity and line broadening(turbulence) from H II regions and DIG.
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| 11. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy, et al.
(författare)
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From giant clumps to clouds - III. The connection between star formation and turbulence in the ISM
- 2022
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 514:1, s. 480-496
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Supersonic gas turbulence is a ubiquitous property of the interstellar medium. The level of turbulence, quantified by the gas velocity dispersion (sigma(g)), is observed to increase with the star formation rate (SFR) of a galaxy, but it is yet not established whether this trend is driven by stellar feedback or gravitational instabilities. In this work, we carry out hydrodynamical simulations of entire disc galaxies, with different gas fractions, to understand the origins of the SFR-sigma(g) relation. We show that disc galaxies reach the same levels of turbulence regardless of the presence of stellar feedback processes, and argue that this is an outcome of the way disc galaxies regulate their gravitational stability. The simulations match the SFR-sigma(g) relation up to SFRs of the order of tens of M-circle dot yr(-1) and sigma(g) similar to 50 km s(-1) in neutral hydrogen and molecular gas, but fail to reach the very large values (> 100 km s(-1)) reported in the literature for rapidly star-forming galaxies. We demonstrate that such high values of sigma(g) can be explained by ( 1) insufficient beam smearing corrections in observations and (2) stellar feedback being coupled to the ionized gas phase traced by recombination lines. Given that the observed SFR-sigma(g) relation is composed of highly heterogeneous data, with sigma(g) at high SFRs almost exclusively being derived from H alpha observations of high-redshift galaxies with complex morphologies, we caution against analytical models that attempt to explain the SFR-sigma(g) relation without accounting for these effects.
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| 12. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy
(författare)
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The origin of the Hα line profiles in simulated disc galaxies
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Observations of ionised Hα gas in disc galaxies with high star formation rates have ubiquitous and significant line broadening with widths σHα≳50−100 km s−1. To understand whether this broadening reflects gas turbulence within the interstellar medium (ISM) of galactic discs, or arises from off-the-plane emission in mass-loaded galactic winds, we perform radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of isolated Milky Way-mass disc galaxies in a gas-poor (low-redshift) and gas rich (high-redshift) condition and create mock Hα emission line profiles. We find that the vast majority of the Hα emission is confined within the ISM, with extraplanar gas contributing mainly to the extended profile wings. This substantiates the \Halpha emission line as a tracer of mid-plane disc dynamics. We investigate the relative contribution of diffuse and dense Hα emitting gas, corresponding to DIG (ρ≲0.1 cm−3, T∼8 000 K) and HII regions (ρ≳10 cm−3, T∼10 000 K), respectively, and find that DIG contributes ≲10% of the total LHα. However, the DIG can reach upwards of σHα∼60−80 km s−1 while the HII regions are much less turbulent σHα∼10−40 km s−1. This implies that the σHα observed using the full Hα emission line is dependent on the relative Hα contribution from DIG/HII regions and a larger fDIG would shift σHα to higher values. Finally, we show that σHα evolves, in both the DIG and HII regions, with the galaxy gas fraction. Our high-redshift equivalent galaxy is roughly twice as turbulent, except for in the DIG which has a more shallow evolution.
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| 13. |
- Feltzing, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Constraining churning and blurring in the Milky Way using large spectroscopic surveys - An exploratory study
- 2020
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 493:1, s. 1419-1433
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have investigated the possibilities to quantify how much stars move in theMilkyWay disc due to diffuse processes (blurring) and due to influences from spiral arms and the bar (churning). We assume that the formation radius of a star can be inferred if we know its elemental abundances and age and the metallicity profile of the interstellar medium at the time of the star's formation. We use data for red giant branch stars from APOGEE DR14, parallaxes from Gaia, and stellar ages based on the C and N abundances. In our sample, we find that half of the stars have experienced some sort of radial migration, 10 per cent likely have suffered only from churning, and a modest 5-7 per cent have never experienced either churning or blurring making them ideal tracers of the original properties of the cool stellar disc. To arrive at these numbers, we imposed the requirement that the stars that are considered to be churned have highly circular orbits. If instead we require that the star has moved away from its formation position and at the same time that its Galactocentric radius at formation did not fall between the apo- and pericentre of its orbit today, we find that about half of the stars have undergone a radial migration. We have thus shown that it is possible to put up a framework to quantify churning and blurring. Future work includes investigations of how selection effects influence the results.
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| 14. |
- Gieles, Mark, et al.
(författare)
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Concurrent formation of supermassive stars and globular clusters : Implications for early self-enrichment
- 2018
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 478:2, s. 2461-2479
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a model for the concurrent formation of globular clusters (GCs) and supermassive stars (SMSs, ≳103M⊙) to address the origin of the HeCNONaMgAl abundance anomalies in GCs. GCs form in converging gas flows and accumulate low-angular momentum gas, which accretes on to protostars. This leads to an adiabatic contraction of the cluster and an increase of the stellar collision rate. A SMS can form via runaway collisions if the cluster reaches sufficiently high density before two-body relaxation halts the contraction. This condition is met if the number of stars ≳106 and the gas accretion rate ≳105M⊙ Myr-1, reminiscent of GC formation in high gas-density environments, such as - but not restricted to - the early Universe. The strong SMS wind mixes with the inflowing pristine gas, such that the protostars accrete diluted hot-hydrogen burning yields of the SMS. Because of continuous rejuvenation, the amount of processed material liberated by the SMS can be an order of magnitude higher than its maximum mass. This 'conveyor-belt' production of hot-hydrogen burning products provides a solution to the mass budget problem that plagues other scenarios. Additionally, the liberated material is mildly enriched in helium and relatively rich in other hot-hydrogen burning products, in agreement with abundances of GCs today. Finally, we find a super-linear scaling between the amount of processed material and cluster mass, providing an explanation for the observed increase of the fraction of processed material with GC mass. We discuss open questions of this new GC enrichment scenario and propose observational tests.
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| 15. |
- Goater, Alex, et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : The direct link between mass growth history and the extended stellar haloes of the faintest dwarf galaxies
- 2024
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 527:2, s. 2403-2412
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ultra-f aint dw arf galaxies (UFDs) are commonly found in close proximity to the Milky Way and other massive spiral galaxies. As such, their projected stellar ellipticity and extended light distributions are often thought to owe to tidal forces. In this paper, we study the projected stellar ellipticities and faint stellar outskirts of tidally isolated ultra-faints drawn from the 'Engineering Dwarfs at Galaxy Formation's Edge' (EDGE) cosmological simulation suite. Despite their tidal isolation, our simulated dwarfs exhibit a wide range of projected ellipticities (0.03 < ϵ < 0.85), with many possessing anisotropic extended stellar haloes that mimic tidal tails, but owe instead to late-time accretion of lower mass companions. Furthermore, we find a strong causal relationship between ellipticity and formation time of a UFD, which is robust to a wide variation in the feedback model. We show that the distribution of projected ellipticities in our suite of simulated EDGE dwarfs matches well with a sample of 19 Local Group dwarf galaxies and a sample of 11 isolated dwarf galaxies. Given ellipticity in EDGE arises from an ex-situ accretion origin, the agreement in shape indicates the ellipticities of some observed dwarfs may also originate from a non-tidal scenario. The orbital parameters of these observed dwarfs further support that they are not currently tidally disrupting. If the baryonic content in these galaxies is still tidally intact, then the same may be true for their dark matter content, making these galaxies in our Local Group pristine laboratories for testing dark matter and galaxy formation models.
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| 16. |
- Grisdale, Kearn, et al.
(författare)
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On the observed diversity of star formation efficiencies in Giant Molecular Clouds
- 2019
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 486:4, s. 5482-5491
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Observations find a median star formation efficiency per free-fall time in Milky Way Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) of the order of eff ~ 1 per cent with dispersions of ~0.5dex. The origin of this scatter in eff is still debated and difficult to reproduce with analytical models.We track the formation, evolution and destruction of GMCs in a hydrodynamical simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy and by deriving cloud properties in an observationally motivated way, we measure the distribution of star formation efficiencies which are in excellent agreement with observations. We find no significant link between eff and any measured global property of GMCs (e.g. gas mass, velocity dispersion). Instead, a wide range of efficiencies exist in the entire parameter space. From the cloud evolutionary tracks, we find that each cloud follows a unique evolutionary path which gives rise to a wide diversity in all properties.We argue that it is this diversity in cloud properties, above everything else, that results in the dispersion of eff .
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| 17. |
- Grisdale, Kearn, et al.
(författare)
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Physical properties and scaling relations of molecular clouds: the effect of stellar feedback
- 2018
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 479:3, s. 3167-3180
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using hydrodynamical simulations of entire galactic discs similar to the Milky Way (MW), reaching 4.6{ pc} resolution, we study the origins of observed physical properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We find that efficient stellar feedback is a necessary ingredient in order to develop a realistic interstellar medium, leading to molecular cloud masses, sizes, velocity dispersions, and virial parameters in excellent agreement with MW observations. GMC scaling relations observed in the MW, such as the mass-size (M-R), velocity dispersion-size (σ-R), and the σ-RΣ relations, are reproduced in a feedback-driven ISM when observed in projection, with M∝R2.3 and σ∝R0.56. When analysed in 3D, GMC scaling relations steepen significantly, indicating potential limitations of our understanding of molecular cloud 3D structure from observations. Furthermore, we demonstrate how a GMC population's underlying distribution of virial parameters can strongly influence the scatter in derived scaling relations. Finally, we show that GMCs with nearly identical global properties exist in different evolutionary stages, where a majority of clouds being either gravitationally bound or expanding, but with a significant fraction being compressed by external ISM pressure, at all times.
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| 18. |
- Grisdale, Kearn, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of stellar feedback on the density and velocity structure of the interstellar medium
- 2017
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 466:1, s. 1093-1110
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We study the impact of stellar feedback in shaping the density and velocity structure of neutral hydrogen (H I) in disc galaxies. For our analysis, we carry out ~4.6 pc resolution N-body+adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic simulations of isolated galaxies, set up to mimic a Milky Way and a Large and Small Magellanic Cloud. We quantify the density and velocity structure of the interstellar medium using power spectra and compare the simulated galaxies to observedHI in local spiral galaxies from THINGS (TheHI Nearby Galaxy Survey). Our models with stellar feedback give an excellent match to the observed THINGS HI density power spectra. We find that kinetic energy power spectra in feedback-regulated galaxies, regardless of galaxy mass and size, show scalings in excellent agreement with supersonic turbulence (E(k) ∝ k-2) on scales below the thickness of the HI layer. We show that feedback influences the gas density field, and drives gas turbulence, up to large (kpc) scales. This is in stark contrast to density fields generated by large-scale gravity-only driven turbulence. We conclude that the neutral gas content of galaxies carries signatures of stellar feedback on all scales.
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| 19. |
- Joshi, Gandhali D., et al.
(författare)
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VINTERGATAN-GM : How do mergers affect the satellite populations of MW-like galaxies?
- 2024
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 528:2, s. 2346-2357
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We investigate the impact of a galaxy’s merger history on its system of satellites using the new VINTERGATAN-GM suite of zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-mass systems. The suite simulates five realizations of the same halo with targeted ‘genetic modifications’ of a z ≈ 2 merger, but resulting in the same halo mass at z = 0. We find that differences in the satellite stellar mass functions last for 2.25−4.25 Gyr after the z ≈ 2 merger; specifically, the haloes that have undergone smaller mergers host up to 60 per cent more satellites than those of the larger merger scenarios. However, by z = 0 these differences in the satellite stellar mass functions have been erased. The differences in satellite numbers seen soon after the mergers are driven by several factors, including the timings of significant mergers (with M200c mass ratios >1:30 and bringing in M∗ ≥ 108 M☉ at infall), the masses and satellite populations of the central and merging systems, and the subsequent extended history of smaller mergers. The results persist when measured at fixed central stellar mass rather than fixed time, implying that a host’s recent merger history can be a significant source of scatter when reconstructing its dynamical properties from its satellite population.
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| 20. |
- Kim, Ji Hoon, et al.
(författare)
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THE AGORA HIGH-RESOLUTION GALAXY SIMULATIONS COMPARISON PROJECT. II. ISOLATED DISK TEST
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 833:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using an isolated Milky Way-mass galaxy simulation, we compare results from nine state-of-the-art gravito-hydrodynamics codes widely used in the numerical community. We utilize the infrastructure we have built for the AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. This includes the common disk initial conditions, common physics models (e.g., radiative cooling and UV background by the standardized package Grackle) and common analysis toolkit yt, all of which are publicly available. Subgrid physics models such as Jeans pressure floor, star formation, supernova feedback energy, and metal production are carefully constrained across code platforms. With numerical accuracy that resolves the disk scale height, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in many dimensions including: gas and stellar surface densities, rotation curves, velocity dispersions, density and temperature distribution functions, disk vertical heights, stellar clumps, star formation rates, and Kennicutt-Schmidt relations. Quantities such as velocity dispersions are very robust (agreement within a few tens of percent at all radii) while measures like newly formed stellar clump mass functions show more significant variation (difference by up to a factor of ∼3). Systematic differences exist, for example, between mesh-based and particle-based codes in the low-density region, and between more diffusive and less diffusive schemes in the high-density tail of the density distribution. Yet intrinsic code differences are generally small compared to the variations in numerical implementations of the common subgrid physics such as supernova feedback. Our experiment reassures that, if adequately designed in accordance with our proposed common parameters, results of a modern high-resolution galaxy formation simulation are more sensitive to input physics than to intrinsic differences in numerical schemes.
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| 21. |
- Kraljic, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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Emergence and cosmic evolution of the Kennicutt- Schmidt relation driven by interstellar turbulence
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - 0004-6361. ; 682
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The scaling relations between the gas content and star formation rate of galaxies provide useful insights into the processes governing their formation and evolution. We investigated the emergence and the physical drivers of the global Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation at 0:25 ≤ z ≤ 4 in the cosmological hydrodynamic simulation NewHorizon, capturing the evolution of a few hundred galaxies with a resolution down to 34 pc. The details of this relation vary strongly with the stellar mass of galaxies and the redshift. A power-law relation ΣSFR / Σa gas with a ≈ 1:4, like that found empirically, emerges at z ≈ 2..3 for the more massive half of the galaxy population. However, no such convergence is found in the lower-mass galaxies, for which the relation gets shallower with decreasing redshift. At galactic scales, the star formation activity correlates with the level of turbulence of the interstellar medium, quantified by the Mach number, rather than with the gas fraction (neutral or molecular), confirming the conclusions found in previous works. With decreasing redshift, the number of outliers with short depletion times diminishes, reducing the scatter of the KS relation, while the overall population of galaxies shifts toward low densities. Our results, from parsec-scale star formation models calibrated with local Universe physics, demonstrate that the cosmological evolution of the environmental (e.g., mergers) and internal conditions (e.g., gas fractions) conspire to shape the KS relation. This is an illustration of how the interplay of global and local processes leaves a detectable imprint on galactic-scale observables and scaling relations.
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| 22. |
- Kretschmer, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Rapid filamentary accretion as the origin of extended thin discs
- 2020
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 497:4, s. 4346-4356
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Galactic outflows driven by stellar feedback are crucial for explaining the inefficiency of star formation in galaxies. Although strong feedback can promote the formation of galactic discs by limiting star formation at early times and removing low angular momentum (AM) gas, it is not understood how the same feedback can result in diverse objects such as elliptical galaxies or razor thin spiral galaxies. We investigate this problem using cosmological zoom-in simulations of two galaxies forming within 1012 M☉ haloes with almost identical mass accretion histories and halo spin parameters. However, the two resulting galaxies end up with very different bulge-to-disc ratios at z = 0. At z > 1.5, the two galaxies feature a surface density of star formation ΣSFR ≃ 10 M☉ yr−1 kpc−2, leading to strong outflows. After the last starburst episode, both galaxies feature a dramatic gaseous disc growth from 1 to 5 kpc during 1 Gyr, a decisive event we dub 'the Grand Twirl'. After this event, the evolutionary tracks diverge strongly, with one galaxy ending up as a bulge-dominated galaxy, whereas the other ends up as a disc-dominated galaxy. The origins of this dichotomy are the AM of the accreted gas, and whether it adds constructively to the initial disc angular momentum. The build-up of this extended disc leads to a rapid lowering of ΣSFR by over two orders of magnitude with ΣSFR ≲ 0.1 M☉ yr−1 kpc−2, in remarkable agreement with what is derived from Milky Way stellar populations. As a consequence, supernovae explosions are spread out and cannot launch galactic outflows anymore, allowing for the persistence of a thin, gently star-forming, extended disc.
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| 23. |
- Liang, Cameron J., et al.
(författare)
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Observing the circumgalactic medium of simulated galaxies through synthetic absorption spectra
- 2018
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 479:2, s. 1822-1835
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We explore the multiphase structure of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) probed by synthetic spectra through a cosmological zoom-in galaxy formation simulation. We employ a Bayesian method for modelling a combination of absorption lines to derive physical properties of absorbers with a formal treatment of detections, including saturated systems, and non-detections in a uniform manner. We find that in the lines of sight (LOS) passing through localized density structures, absorption lines of low, intermediate, and high ions are present in the spectrum and overlap in velocity space. Low, intermediate, and high ions can be combined to derive the mass-weighted properties of a density-varying peak, although the ions are not cospatial within the structure. By contrast, LOS that go through the hot halo only exhibit detectable HI and high ions. In such LOS, the absorption lines are typically broad due to the complex velocity fields across the entire halo. We show that the derived gas density, temperature, and metallicity match closely the corresponding HI mass-weighted averages along the LOS. We also show that when the data quality allows, our Bayesian technique allows one to recover the underlying physical properties of LOS by incorporating both detections and non-detections. It is especially useful to include non-detections, of species such as NV or Ne VIII, when the number of detections of strong absorbers, such as HI and OVI, is smaller than the number of model parameters (density, temperature, and metallicity).
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| 24. |
- Muni, Claudia, et al.
(författare)
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From particles to orbits : precise dark matter density profiles using dynamical information
- 2024
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 527:3, s. 9250-9262
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We introduce a new method to calculate dark matter halo density profiles from simulations. Each particle is ‘smeared’ over its orbit to obtain a dynamical profile that is averaged over a dynamical time, in contrast to the traditional approach of binning particles based on their instantaneous positions. The dynamical and binned profiles are in good agreement, with the dynamical approach showing a significant reduction in Poisson noise in the innermost regions. We find that the inner cusps of the new dynamical profiles continue inward all the way to the softening radius, reproducing the central density profile of higher resolution simulations within the 95 per cent confidence intervals, for haloes in virial equilibrium. Folding in dynamical information thus provides a new approach to improve the precision of dark matter density profiles at small radii, for minimal computational cost. Our technique makes two key assumptions that the halo is in equilibrium (phase mixed) and the potential is spherically symmetric. We discuss why the method is successful despite strong violations of spherical symmetry in the centres of haloes, and explore how substructures disturb equilibrium at large radii.
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| 25. |
- Nandakumar, Govind, et al.
(författare)
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Composition of Giants 1° North of the Galactic Center : Detailed Abundance Trends for 21 Elements Observed with IGRINS
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X. ; 964:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report the first high-resolution, detailed abundances of 21 elements for giants in the Galactic bulge/bar within 1° of the Galactic plane, where high extinction has rendered such studies challenging. Our high-signal-to-noise-ratio and high-resolution, near-infrared spectra of seven M giants in the inner bulge, located at (l, b) = (0°, +1°), are observed using the IGRINS spectrograph. We report the first multichemical study of the inner Galactic bulge by investigating, relative to a robust new solar neighborhood sample, the abundance trends of 21 elements, including the relatively difficult to study heavy elements. The elements studied are: F, Mg, Si, S, Ca, Na, Al, K, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, Ce, Nd, and Yb. We investigate bulge membership of all seven stars using distances and orbital simulations, and we find that the most metal-poor star may be a halo interloper. Our investigation also shows that the inner bulge as close as 1° north of the Galactic Center displays a similarity to the inner disk sequence, following the high-[α/Fe] envelope of the solar vicinity metal-rich population, though no firm conclusions for a different enrichment history are evident from this sample. We find a small fraction of metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] > −0.5), but most of our stars are mainly of supersolar metallicity. Fluorine is found to be enhanced at high metallicity compared to the solar neighborhood, but confirmation with a larger sample is required. We will apply this approach to explore the populations of the nuclear stellar disk and the nuclear star cluster.
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| 26. |
- Ohlin, Loke, et al.
(författare)
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Supernovae feedback propagation: the role of turbulence
- 2019
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1365-2966 .- 0035-8711. ; 485:3, s. 3887-3894
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Modelling the propagation of supernova (SN) bubbles, in terms of energy, momentum, and spatial extent, is critical for simulations of galaxy evolution which do not capture these scales. To date, small-scale models of SN feedback predict that the evolution of above-mentioned quantities can be solely parametrized by average quantities of the surrounding gas, such as density. However, most of these studies neglect the turbulent motions of this medium. In this paper, we study the propagation and evolution of SNe in turbulent environments. We confirm that the time evolution of injected energy and momentum can be characterized by the average density. However, the details of the density structure of the interstellar medium play a crucial role in the spatial extent of the bubble, even at a given average density. We demonstrate that spherically symmetric models of SN bubbles do not model well their spatial extent, and therefore cannot not be used to design sub-grid models of SNe feedback at galactic and cosmological scales.
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| 27. |
- Orkney, Matthew D.A., et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : the puzzling ellipticity of Eridanus II's star cluster and its implications for dark matter at the heart of an ultra-faint dwarf
- 2022
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 515:1, s. 185-200
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Eridanus II (EriII) 'ultra-faint' dwarf has a large (15 pc) and low-mass (4.3 × 103 M·) star cluster (SC) offset from its centre by 23 ± 3 pc in projection. Its size and offset are naturally explained if EriII has a central dark matter core, but such a core may be challenging to explain in a ΛCDM cosmology. In this paper, we revisit the survival and evolution of EriII's SC, focusing for the first time on its puzzlingly large ellipticity (0.31+0.05-0.06). We perform a suite of 960 direct N-body simulations of SCs, orbiting within a range of spherical background potentials fit to ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxy simulations. We find only two scenarios that come close to explaining EriII's SC. In the first scenario, EriII has a low-density dark matter core (of size ∼70 pc and density ≲ 2× 108, M⊙ , kpc-3). In this model, the high ellipticity of EriII's SC is set at birth, with the lack of tidal forces in the core allowing its ellipticity to remain frozen for long times. In the second scenario, EriII's SC orbits in a partial core, with its high ellipticity owing to its imminent tidal destruction. However, this latter model struggles to reproduce the large size of EriII's SC, and it predicts substantial tidal tails around EriII's SC that should have already been seen in the data. This leads us to favour the cored model. We discuss potential caveats to these findings, and the implications of the cored model for galaxy formation and the nature of dark matter.
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| 28. |
- Orkney, Matthew D.A., et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : the shape of dark matter haloes in the faintest galaxies
- 2023
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 525:3, s. 3516-3532
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Collisionless dark matter only (DMO) structure formation simulations predict that dark matter (DM) haloes are prolate in their centres and triaxial towards their outskirts. The addition of gas condensation transforms the central DM shape to be rounder and more oblate. It is not clear, however, whether such shape transformations occur in 'ultra-faint' dwarfs, which have extremely low baryon fractions. We present the first study of the shape and velocity anisotropy of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that have gas mass fractions of fgas(r < Rhalf) < 0.06. These dwarfs are drawn from the Engineering Dwarfs at Galaxy formation's Edge (EDGE) project, using high-resolution simulations that allow us to resolve DM halo shapes within the half-light radius (∼100 pc). We show that gas-poor ultra-faints (M200c ≤ 1.5 × 109 M⊙; fgas < 10-5) retain their pristine prolate DM halo shape even when gas, star formation, and feedback are included. This could provide a new and robust test of DM models. By contrast, gas-rich ultra-faints (M200c > 3 × 109 M⊙; fgas > 10-4) become rounder and more oblate within ∼10 half-light radii. Finally, we find that most of our simulated dwarfs have significant radial velocity anisotropy that rises to at R 3Rhalf. The one exception is a dwarf that forms a rotating gas/stellar disc because of a planar, major merger. Such strong anisotropy should be taken into account when building mass models of gas-poor ultra-faints.
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| 29. |
- Orkney, Matthew D.A., et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : Two routes to dark matter core formation in ultra-faint dwarfs
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 504:3, s. 3509-3522
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the standard Lambda cold dark matter paradigm, pure dark matter simulations predict dwarf galaxies should inhabit dark matter haloes with a centrally diverging density 'cusp'. This is in conflict with observations that typically favour a constant density 'core'. We investigate this 'cusp-core problem' in 'ultra-faint' dwarf galaxies simulated as part of the 'Engineering Dwarfs at Galaxy formation's Edge' project. We find, similarly to previous work, that gravitational potential fluctuations within the central region of the simulated dwarfs kinematically heat the dark matter particles, lowering the dwarfs' central dark matter density. However, these fluctuations are not exclusively caused by gas inflow/outflow, but also by impulsive heating from minor mergers. We use the genetic modification approach on one of our dwarf's initial conditions to show how a delayed assembly history leads to more late minor mergers and, correspondingly, more dark matter heating. This provides a mechanism by which even ultra-faint dwarfs ($M_∗ \lt 10^5\, \text{M}_{\odot }$), in which star formation was fully quenched at high redshift, can have their central dark matter density lowered over time. In contrast, we find that late major mergers can regenerate a central dark matter cusp, if the merging galaxy had sufficiently little star formation. The combination of these effects leads us to predict significant stochasticity in the central dark matter density slopes of the smallest dwarfs, driven by their unique star formation and mass assembly histories.
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| 30. |
- Pehlivan Rhodin, Nils Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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The nature of damped HI absorbers probed by cosmological simulations: satellite accretion and outflows
- 2019
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; , s. 3634-3634
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use cosmological hydrodynamic zoom simulations to study the neutral gas distributionin and around galaxies that gives rise to high column density HILyαabsorption (dampedLyαsystems (DLAs) and sub-DLAs) in background quasar spectra. Such simulations oftensacrifice numerical resolution for volume that affects the lower density galaxy halo gas,and simulations have difficulties reproducing the span of projected separations (b) betweenabsorbing clouds and their hosts. Our simulations produce (sub-)DLAs over the entire probedparameter space (b50 kpc and metallicity−4[M/H]0.5) at all redshifts (z∼0.4−3.0),enclosing spectroscopically confirmed absorber-galaxy pairs. Recovering (sub-)DLAs atb20−30 kpc from a massive host galaxy requires high numerical resolution and efficientfeedback, and we show that these lines-of-sight are associated with dwarf satellites in the mainhalo, stripped metal-rich gas, and outflows. HIdisc- and halo gas significantly contributesto (sub-)DLAs around galaxies. At large redshifts the halo plays an increasingly importantrole, while at 0.4
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| 31. |
- Petersson, Jonathan, et al.
(författare)
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From starburst to quenching : merger-driven evolution of the star formation regimes in a shell galaxy
- 2023
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 518:3, s. 3261-3273
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Shell galaxies make a class of tidally distorted galaxies, characterized by wide concentric arc(s), extending out to large galactocentric distances with sharp outer edges. Recent observations of young massive star clusters in the prominent outer shell of NGC 474 suggest that such systems host extreme conditions of star formation. In this paper, we present a hydrodynamic simulation of a galaxy merger and its transformation into a shell galaxy. We analyse how the star formation activity evolves with time, location-wise within the system, and what are the physical conditions for star formation. During the interaction, an excess of dense gas appears, triggering a starburst, i.e. an enhanced star formation rate and a reduced depletion time. Star formation coincides with regions of high-molecular gas fraction, such as the galactic nucleus, spiral arms, and occasionally the tidal debris during the early stages of the merger. Tidal interactions scatter stars into a stellar spheroid, while the gas cools down and reforms a disc. The morphological transformation after coalescence stabilizes the gas and thus quenches star formation, without the need for feedback from an active galactic nucleus. This evolution shows similarities with a compaction scenario for compact quenched spheroids at high-redshift, yet without a long red nugget phase. Shells appear after coalescence, during the quenched phase, implying that they do not host the conditions necessary for in situ star formation. The results suggest that shell-forming mergers might be part of the process of turning blue late-type galaxies into red and dead early-types.
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| 32. |
- Pontzen, Andrew, et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : A new approach to suppressing numerical diffusion in adaptive mesh simulations of galaxy formation
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 501:2, s. 1755-1765
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We introduce a new method to mitigate numerical diffusion in adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) simulations of cosmological galaxy formation, and study its impact on a simulated dwarf galaxy as part of the 'EDGE' project. The target galaxy has a maximum circular velocity of 21 km s-1 but evolves in a region that is moving at up to 90 km s-1 relative to the hydrodynamic grid. In the absence of any mitigation, diffusion softens the filaments feeding our galaxy. As a result, gas is unphysically held in the circumgalactic medium around the galaxy for 320 Myr, delaying the onset of star formation until cooling and collapse eventually triggers an initial starburst at z = 9. Using genetic modification, we produce 'velocity-zeroed' initial conditions in which the grid-relative streaming is strongly suppressed; by design, the change does not significantly modify the large-scale structure or dark matter accretion history. The resulting simulation recovers a more physical, gradual onset of star formation starting at z = 17. While the final stellar masses are nearly consistent (4.8 × 106 M⊙ and 4.4 × 106 M⊙ for unmodified and velocity-zeroed, respectively), the dynamical and morphological structure of the z = 0 dwarf galaxies are markedly different due to the contrasting histories. Our approach to diffusion suppression is suitable for any AMR zoom cosmological galaxy formation simulations, and is especially recommended for those of small galaxies at high redshift.
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| 33. |
- Prgomet, Mateo, et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : The sensitivity of ultra-faint dwarfs to a metallicity-dependent initial mass function
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 513:2, s. 2326-2334
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Motivated by the observed bottom-light initial mass function (IMF) in faint dwarfs, we study how a metallicity-dependent IMF affects the feedback budget and observables of an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. We model the evolution of a low-mass 8 × 108 M⊙) dark matter halo with cosmological, zoomed hydrodynamical simulations capable of resolving individual supernovae explosions, which we complement with an empirically motivated subgrid prescription for systematic IMF variations. In this framework, at the low gas metallicities typical of faint dwarfs, the IMF of newborn stellar populations becomes top-heavy, increasing the efficiency of supernova and photoionization feedback in regulating star formation. This results in a 100-fold reduction of the final stellar mass of the dwarf compared to a canonical IMF, at fixed dynamical mass. The increase in the feedback budget is none the less met by increased metal production from more numerous massive stars, leading to nearly constant iron content at z = 0. A metallicity-dependent IMF therefore provides a mechanism to produce low-mass (M* ∼ 103 M⊙), yet enriched ([Fe/H] -2) field dwarf galaxies, thus opening a self-consistent avenue to populate the plateau in [Fe/H] at the faintest end of the mass-metallicity relation.
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| 34. |
- Puschnig, Johannes, 1980-, et al.
(författare)
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Unveiling the gravitationally unstable disc of a massive star-forming galaxy using NOEMA and MUSE
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 524:3, s. 3913-3929
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using new high-resolution data of CO (2–1), Hα and Hβ obtained with the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) and the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the Very Large Telescope, we have performed a Toomre Q disc stability analysis and studied star formation, gas depletion times and other environmental parameters on sub-kpc scales within the z ∼ 0 galaxy SDSS J125013.84+073444.5 (LARS 8). The galaxy hosts a massive, clumpy disc and is a proto-typical analogue of main-sequence galaxies at z ∼ 1 − 2. We show that the massive (molecular) clumps in LARS 8 are the result of an extremely gravitationally unstable gas disc, with large scale instabilities found across the whole extent of the rotating disc, with only the innermost 500 pc being stabilized by its bulge-like structure. The radial profiles further reveal that – contrary to typical disc galaxies – the molecular gas depletion time decreases from more than 1 Gyr in the centre to less than ∼100 Myr in the outskirts of the disc, supporting the findings of a Toomre-unstable disc. We further identified and analysed 12 individual massive molecular clumps. They are virialized and follow the mass–size relation, indicating that on local (cloud/clump) scales the stars form with efficiencies comparable to those in Milky Way clouds. The observed high star formation rate must thus be the result of triggering of cloud/clump formation over large scales due to disc instability. Our study provides evidence that ‘in-situ’ massive clump formation (as also observed at high redshifts) is very efficiently induced by large-scale instabilities.
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| 35. |
- Puschnig, Johannes, et al.
(författare)
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Unveiling the gravitationally unstable disk of a massive star-forming galaxy using NOEMA and MUSE
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Using new high-resolution data of CO (2–1), Hα and Hβ obtained with the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) and the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the Very Large Telescope, we have performed a Toomre Q disc stability analysis and studied star formation, gas depletion times and other environmental parameters on sub-kpc scales within the z∼0 galaxy SDSS J125013.84+073444.5 (LARS 8). The galaxy hosts a massive, clumpy disc and is a proto-typical analogue ofmain-sequence (MS) galaxies at z∼1-2. We show that the massive (molecular) clumps in LARS 8 are the result of an extremely Toomre-unstable gas disc, with large scale in-stabilities found across the whole extent of the rotating disc, with only the innermost 500 pc being stabilized by its bulgelike structure. The radial profiles further reveal that – contrary to typical disc galaxies – the molecular gas depletion time decreases from more than 1 Gyr in the center to less than ∼100 Myr in the outskirts of the disc, supporting the findings of a Toomre-unstable disc. We further identified and analysed 12 individual massive molecular clumps. They are virialized and follow the mass-size relation, indicating that on local (cloud/clump) scales the stars form with efficiencies comparable to those in Milky Way clouds. The observed high star formation rate must thus be the result of triggering of cloud/clump formation over large scales due to disc instability. Our study thus provides evidence that the massive clumps observed in high-z disc galaxies form “in-situ” from large-scale instabilities.
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| 36. |
- Renaud, Florent, et al.
(författare)
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From giant clumps to clouds - I. The impact of gas fraction evolution on the stability of galactic discs
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 508:1, s. 352-370
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The morphology of gas-rich disc galaxies at redshift is dominated by a few massive clumps. The process of formation or assembly of these clumps and their relation to molecular clouds in contemporary spiral galaxies are still unknown. Using simulations of isolated disc galaxies, we study how the structure of the interstellar medium and the stability regime of the discs change when varying the gas fraction. In all galaxies, the stellar component is the main driver of instabilities. However, the molecular gas plays a non-negligible role in the interclump medium of gas-rich cases, and thus in the assembly of the massive clumps. At scales smaller than a few 100 pc, the Toomre-like disc instabilities are replaced by another regime, especially in the gas-rich galaxies. We find that galaxies at low gas fraction (10 percent) stand apart from discs with more gas, which all share similar properties in virtually all aspects we explore. For gas fractions below , the clump-scale regime of instabilities disappears, leaving only the large-scale disc-driven regime. Associating the change of gas fraction to the cosmic evolution of galaxies, this transition marks the end of the clumpy phase of disc galaxies, and allows for the onset of spiral structures, as commonly found in the local Universe.
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| 37. |
- Renaud, Florent, et al.
(författare)
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The origin of the Milky Way globular clusters
- 2017
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 465:3, s. 3622-3636
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy used to explore the formation and evolution of star clusters. We investigate in particular the origin of the bimodality observed in the colour and metallicity of globular clusters, and the environmental evolution through cosmic times in the form of tidal tensors. Our results self-consistently confirm previous findings that the blue, metal-poor clusters form in satellite galaxies that are accreted on to the Milky Way, while the red, metal-rich clusters form mostly in situ, or, to a lower extent, in massive, self-enriched galaxies merging with the Milky Way. By monitoring the tidal fields these populations experience, we find that clusters formed in situ (generally centrally concentrated) feel significantly stronger tides than the accreted ones, both in the present day, and when averaged over their entire life. Furthermore, we note that the tidal field experienced by Milky Way clusters is significantly weaker in the past than at present day, confirming that it is unlikely that a power-law cluster initial mass function like that of young massive clusters, is transformed into the observed peaked distribution in the Milky Way with relaxation-driven evaporation in a tidal field.
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| 38. |
- Rey, Martin P., et al.
(författare)
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EDGE – Dark matter or astrophysics? Breaking dark matter heating degeneracies with H I rotation in faint dwarf galaxies
- 2024
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - 0035-8711. ; 529:3, s. 2379-2398
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Low-mass dwarf galaxies are expected to reside within dark matter haloes that have a pristine, ‘cuspy’ density profile within their stellar half-light radii. This is because they form too few stars to significantly drive dark matter heating through supernova-driven outflows. Here, we study such simulated faint systems (104 ≤ M* ≤ 2 × 106 M) drawn from high-resolution (3 pc) cosmological simulations from the ‘Engineering Dwarf Galaxies at the Edge of galaxy formation’ (EDGE) project. We confirm that these objects have steep and rising inner dark matter density profiles at z = 0, little affected by galaxy formation effects. But five dwarf galaxies from the suite also showcase a detectable H I reservoir (MH I ≈ 105 − 106 M), analogous to the observed population of faint, H I-bearing dwarf galaxies. These reservoirs exhibit episodes of ordered rotation, opening windows for rotation curve analysis. Within actively star-forming dwarfs, stellar feedback easily disrupts the tenuous H I discs (vφ,g ≈ 10 km s−1), making rotation short-lived (≪ 150 Myr) and more challenging to interpret for dark matter inferences. In contrast, we highlight a long-lived (≥ 500 Myr) and easy-to-interpret H I rotation curve extending to ≈ 2 r1/2,3D in a quiescent dwarf, that has not formed new stars since z = 4. This stable gas disc is supported by an oblate dark matter halo shape that drives high-angular momentum gas flows. Our results strongly motivate further searches for H I in rotation curves in the observed population of H I-bearing low-mass dwarfs, that provide a key regime to disentangle the respective roles of dark matter microphysics and galaxy formation effects in driving dark matter heating.
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| 39. |
- Rey, Martin P, et al.
(författare)
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EDGE: from quiescent to gas-rich to star-forming low-mass dwarf galaxies
- 2020
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 497:2, s. 1508-1520
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We study how star formation is regulated in low-mass field dwarf galaxies (105≤M⋆≤106M⊙), using cosmological high-resolution (3pc) hydrodynamical simulations. Cosmic reionization quenches star formation in all our simulated dwarfs, but three galaxies with final dynamical masses of 3×109M⊙ are subsequently able to replenish their interstellar medium by slowly accreting gas. Two of these galaxies reignite and sustain star formation until the present day at an average rate of 10−5M⊙yr−1, highly reminiscent of observed low-mass star-forming dwarf irregulars such as Leo T. The resumption of star formation is delayed by several billion years due to residual feedback from stellar winds and Type Ia supernovae; even at z = 0, the third galaxy remains in a temporary equilibrium with a large gas content but without any ongoing star formation. Using the ‘genetic modification’ approach, we create an alternative mass growth history for this gas-rich quiescent dwarf and show how a small (0.2dex) increase in dynamical mass can overcome residual stellar feedback, reigniting star formation. The interaction between feedback and mass build-up produces a diversity in the stellar ages and gas content of low-mass dwarfs, which will be probed by combining next-generation H i and imaging surveys.
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| 40. |
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| 41. |
- Rey, Martin P., et al.
(författare)
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EDGE : What shapes the relationship between H i and stellar observables in faint dwarf galaxies?
- 2022
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 511:4, s. 5672-5681
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We show how the interplay between feedback and mass-growth histories introduces scatter in the relationship between stellar and neutral gas properties of field faint dwarf galaxies (M∗ 106, M⊙). Across a suite of cosmological, high-resolution zoomed simulations, we find that dwarf galaxies of stellar masses 105 ≤ M∗ ≤ 106, M⊙ are bimodal in their cold gas content, being either H i-rich or H i-deficient. This bimodality is generated through the coupling between (i) the modulation of H i contents by the background of ultraviolet radiation (UVB) at late times and (ii) the significant scatter in the stellar-to-halo mass relationship induced by reionization. Furthermore, our H i-rich dwarfs exhibit disturbed and time-variable neutral gas distributions primarily due to stellar feedback. Over the last four billion years, we observe order-of-magnitude changes around the median M H,\small I, factor-of-a-few variations in H i spatial extents, and spatial offsets between H i and stellar components regularly exceeding the galaxies' optical sizes. Time variability introduces further scatter in the M∗-M H, small I relation and affects a galaxy's detectability in H i at any given time. These effects will need to be accounted for when interpreting observations of the population of faint, H i-bearing dwarfs by the combination of optical and radio wide, deep surveys.
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| 42. |
- Rey, Martin P., et al.
(författare)
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VINTERGATAN-GM : The cosmological imprints of early mergers on Milky-Way-mass galaxies
- 2023
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 521:1, s. 995-1012
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a new suite of cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamical (≈ 20 pc spatial resolution) simulations of Milky-Way mass galaxies to study how a varying mass ratio for a Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) progenitor impacts the z = 0 chemodynamics of halo stars. Using the genetic modification approach, we create five cosmological histories for a Milky-Way-mass dark matter halo (M200 ≈ 1012 M☉), incrementally increasing the stellar mass ratio of a z ≈ 2 merger from 1:25 to 1:2, while fixing the galaxy’s final dynamical, stellar mass, and large-scale environment. We find markedly different morphologies at z = 0 following this change in early history, with a growing merger resulting in increasingly compact and bulge-dominated galaxies. Despite this structural diversity, all galaxies show a radially biased population of inner halo stars like the Milky-Way’s GSE which, surprisingly, has a similar magnitude, age, [Fe/H], and [α/Fe] distribution whether the z ≈ 2 merger is more minor or major. This arises because a smaller ex-situ population at z ≈ 2 is compensated by a larger population formed in an earlier merger-driven starburst whose contribution to the GES can grow dynamically over time, and with both populations strongly overlapping in the [Fe/H] − [α/Fe] plane. Our study demonstrates that multiple high-redshift histories can lead to similar z = 0 chemodynamical features in the halo, highlighting the need for additional constraints to distinguish them, and the importance of considering the full spectrum of progenitors when interpreting z = 0 data to reconstruct our Galaxy’s past.
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| 43. |
- Romeo, Alessandro, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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From lenticulars to blue compact dwarfs: The stellar mass fraction is regulated by disc gravitational instability
- 2020
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 499:4, s. 5656-5664
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The stellar-to-halo mass relation (SHMR) is not only one of the main sources of information we have on the connection between galaxies and their dark matter haloes, but also an important indicator of the performance of galaxy formation models. Here, we use one of the largest sample of galaxies with both high-quality rotation curves and near-infrared surface photometry, and perform a detailed comparative analysis of the SHMR. Our analysis shows that there are significant statistical differences between popular forms of the SHMR, and illustrates the predictive power of a new physically motivated scaling relation, which connects the stellar mass fraction (M·/Mh) to the stellar specific angular momentum (j·) and the stellar radial velocity dispersion (σ·) via disc gravitational instability. Making use of such a relation, we demonstrate (i) how challenging it is to reproduce the efficiency of galaxy formation even for state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, and (ii) that the evolution of the stellar mass fraction is regulated by disc gravitational instability: when M·/Mh varies, j· and σ· also vary as predicted by our scaling relation, thus erasing the memory of such evolution. This implies that the process of disc gravitational instability is intriguingly uniform across disc galaxies of all morphological types: from lenticulars to blue compact dwarfs. In particular, the cosmic variance of Toomre's Q is 0.2 dex, a universal value for both stars and atomic gas.
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| 44. |
- Romeo, Alessandro, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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Larson's scaling laws, and the gravitational instability of clumpy discs at high redshift
- 2014
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 442:2, s. 1230-1238
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gravitational instabilities play a primary role in shaping the clumpy structure and powering the star formation activity of gas-rich high-redshift galaxies. Here, we analyse the stability of such systems, focusing on the size and mass ranges of unstable regions in the disc. Our analysis takes into account the mass–size and linewidth–size scaling relations observed in molecular gas, originally discovered by Larson. We show that such relations can have a strong impact on the size and mass of star-forming clumps, as well as on the stability properties of the disc at all observable scales, making the classical Toomre parameter a highly unreliable indicator of gravitational instability. For instance, a disc with Q = 1 can be far from marginal instability, while a disc with Q ≪ 1 can be marginally unstable. Our work raises an important caveat: if clumpy discs at high redshift have scale-dependent surface densities and velocity dispersions, as implied by the observed clump scaling relations, then we cannot thoroughly understand their stability and star formation properties unless we perform multiscale observations. This will soon be possible thanks to dedicated Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array surveys, which will explore the physical properties of supergiant molecular clouds at the peak of cosmic star formation and beyond.
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| 45. |
- Romeo, Alessandro, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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The specific angular momentum of disc galaxies and its connection with galaxy morphology, bar structure, and disc gravitational instability
- 2023
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 518:1, s. 1002-1021
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The specific angular momenta (j equivalent to J/M) of stars (j(star)), gas (j(gas)), baryons as a whole (j(b)) and dark matter haloes (j(h)) contain clues of vital importance about how galaxies form and evolve. Using one of the largest samples of disc galaxies (S0-BCD) with high-quality rotation curves and near-infrared surface photometry, we perform a detailed comparative analysis of j that stretches across a variety of galaxy properties. Our analysis imposes tight constraints on the 'retained' fractions of specific angular momentum (j(star)/j(h), j(Hi)/j(h), and j(b)/j(h)), as well as on their systematic trends with mass fraction and galaxy morphology, thus on how well specific angular momentum is conserved in the process of disc galaxy formation and evolution. In particular, one of the most innovative results of our analysis is the finding that galaxies with larger baryon fractions have also retained larger fractions of their specific angular momentum. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates how challenging it is to characterize barred galaxies from a gravitational instability point of view. This is true not only for the popular Efstathiou, Lake & Negroponte bar instability criterion, which fails to separate barred from non-barred galaxies in about 55 percent of the cases, but also for the mass-weighted Toomre parameter of atomic gas, < Q(HI)>, which succeeds in separating barred from non-barred galaxies, but only in a statistical sense.
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