Unveiling the role of galactic rotation on star formation

Abstract

We study the star formation process at galactic scales and the role of rotation through numerical simulations of spiral and starburst galaxies using the adaptive mesh refinement code Enzo. We focus on the study of three integrated star formation laws found in the literature: the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) and Silk-Elmegreen (SE) laws, and the dimensionally homogeneous equation proposed by Escala (2015) ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SFR}}\propto \sqrt{G/L}{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{gas}}^{1.5}$. We show that using the last we take into account the effects of the integration along the line of sight and find a unique regime of star formation for both types of galaxies, suppressing the observed bi-modality of the KS law. We find that the efficiencies displayed by our simulations are anti-correlated with the angular velocity of the disk $\Omega$ for the three laws studied in this work. Finally, we show that the dimensionless efficiency of star formation is well represented by an exponentially decreasing function of $-1.9\Omega t_{\mathrm{ff}}^{\mathrm{ini}}$, where $t_{\mathrm{ff}}^{\mathrm{ini}}$ is the initial free-fall time. This leads to a unique galactic star formation relation which reduces the scatter of the bi-modal KS, SE, and Escala (2015) relations by 43%, 43%, and 35% respectively.

arXiv commentAccepted in ApJ, 22 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (30)

• A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering
• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• Theory of Star Formation
• The Star Formation Efficiency in Nearby Galaxies: Measuring Where Gas Forms Stars Effectively
• The Star Formation Law in Nearby Galaxies on Sub-Kpc Scales
• A Multi-Code Analysis Toolkit for Astrophysical Simulation Data
• A Study of the Gas-Star Formation Relation over Cosmic Time
• Enzo: An Adaptive Mesh Refinement Code for Astrophysics
• On the Star Formation Rates in Molecular Clouds
• Different star formation laws for disks versus starbursts at low and high redshifts
• A Universal, Local Star Formation Law in Galactic Clouds, Nearby Galaxies, High-Redshift Disks, and Starbursts
• Star Formation Thresholds in Galactic Disks
• Feedback, Disk Self-regulation and Galaxy Formation
• The role of stellar feedback in the formation of galaxies
• Star Formation in Disk Galaxies. I. Formation and Evolution of Giant Molecular Clouds via Gravitational Instability and Cloud Collisions
• The ATLAS3D Project - XXVIII. Dynamically-driven star formation suppression in early-type galaxies
• Local Axisymmetric Instability Criterion in the Thin, Rotating, Multicomponent Disk
• A Simple Law of Star Formation
• The frequency and nature of `cloud-cloud collisions' in galaxies
• Non-universal star formation efficiency in turbulent ISM
• Control of Star Formation in Galaxies by Gravitational Instability
• Stability of Galactic Gas Disks and the Formation of Massive Clusters
• The spatially resolved Kennicutt-Schmidt relation in the HI dominated regions of spiral and dwarf irregular galaxies
• Super-star clusters versus OB associations
• Low Angular Momentum in Clumpy, Turbulent Disk Galaxies
• The connection between shear and star formation in spiral galaxies
• The role of spin in the formation and evolution of galaxies
• A Test of Star Formation Laws in Disk Galaxies. II. Dependence on dynamical properties
• The Interstellar Medium and Star Formation in Local Galaxies: Variations of the Star Formation Law in Simulations
• On the Functional Form of the Universal Star Formation Law

Cited by in corpus (6)

• When Feedback Fails: The Scaling and Saturation of Star Formation Efficiency
• The EDGE-CALIFA survey: the influence of galactic rotation on the molecular depletion time across the Hubble sequence
• The kiloparsec-scale gas kinematics in two star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 1.47$ seen with ALMA and VLT-SINFONI
• SDSS-IV MaNGA: Constraints on the Conditions for Star Formation in Galaxy Discs
• When Gas Dynamics Decouples from Galactic Rotation: Characterizing ISM Circulation in Disk Galaxies
• VALES V: A kinematic analysis of the molecular gas content in $H$-ATLAS galaxies at $z\sim 0.03-0.35$ using ALMA