Constraining SN feedback: a tug of war between reionization and the Milky Way satellites

Abstract

Theoretical models of galaxy formation based on the cold dark matter cosmogony typically require strong feedback from supernova (SN) explosions in order to reproduce the Milky Way satellite galaxy luminosity function and the faint end of the field galaxy luminosity function. However, too strong a SN feedback also leads to the universe reionizing too late, and the metallicities of Milky Way satellites being too low. The combination of these four observations therefore places tight constraints on SN feedback. We investigate these constraints using the semi-analytical galaxy formation model galform. We find that these observations favour a SN feedback model in which the feedback strength evolves with redshift. We find that, for our best fit model, half of the ionizing photons are emitted by galaxies with rest-frame far-UV absolute magnitudes $M_{\mathrm{AB}}(1500\mathring{\mathrm{A}})<-17.5$, which implies that already observed galaxy populations contribute about half of the photons responsible for reionization. The $z=0$ descendants of these galaxies are mainly galaxies with stellar mass $M_{\ast }>10^{10}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and preferentially inhabit halos with mass $M_{\mathrm{halo}}>10^{13}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$.

17 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for publication on MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Substructure and galaxy formation in the Copernicus Complexio warm dark matter simulations
• The imprint of cosmic reionisation on the luminosity function of galaxies
• Cosmological Galaxy Evolution with Superbubble Feedback II: The Limits of Supernovae
• Reionisation in sterile neutrino cosmologies
• The evolution of the UV-to-mm extragalactic background light: evidence for a top-heavy initial mass function?
• The importance of preventive feedback: inference from observations of the stellar masses and metallicities of Milky Way dwarf galaxies
• Galaxy Formation in Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter Models
• Gravitational-wave event rates as a new probe for dark matter microphysics