Adding Environmental Gas Physics to the Semi-Analytic Method for Galaxy Formation: Gravitational Heating

Abstract

We present results of an attempt to include more detailed gas physics motivated from hydrodynamical simulations within semi-analytic models (SAM) of galaxy formation, focusing on the role that environmental effects play. The main difference to previous SAMs is that we include 'gravitational' heating of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) by the net surplus of gravitational potential energy released from gas that has been stripped from infalling satellites. Gravitational heating appears to be an efficient heating source able to prevent cooling in environments corresponding to dark matter halos more massive than $\sim 10^{13}$M${}_{\odot }$. The energy release by gravitational heating can match that by AGN-feedback in massive galaxies and can exceed it in the most massive ones. However, there is a fundamental difference in the way the two processes operate. Gravitational heating becomes important at late times, when the peak activity of AGNs is already over, and it is very mass dependent. This mass dependency and time behaviour gives the right trend to recover down-sizing in the star-formation rate of massive galaxies. Abridged...

replaced by accepted version to ApJ, some sections have been dropped and text has been added to others to include the referee's comments, several typos have been corrected

References in corpus (4)

• The dependence of Star Formation on Galaxy Stellar Mass
• Strong dusty bursts of star formation in galaxies falling into the cluster RXJ0152.7-1357
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• Downsizing by Shutdown in Red Galaxies
• Galaxy bulges and their black holes: a requirement for the quenching of star formation
• The evolution of the galaxy Red Sequence in simulated clusters and groups
• Thermal Balance in the Intracluster Medium: Is AGN Feedback Necessary?
• Photo-heating and supernova feedback amplify each other's effect on the cosmic star formation rate
• The role of thermal evaporation in galaxy formation
• Studying Large and Small Scale Environments of Ultraviolet Luminous Galaxies