The anatomy of a star-forming galaxy: Pressure-driven regulation of star formation in simulated galaxies
arXiv:1607.05795 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1741
Abstract
We explore the regulation of star formation in star-forming galaxies through a suite of high-resolution isolated galaxy simulations. We use the SPH code GASOLINE, including photoelectric heating and metal cooling, which produces a multi-phase interstellar medium. We show that representative star formation and feedback sub-grid models naturally lead to a weak, sub-linear dependence between the amount of star formation and changes to star formation parameters. We incorporate these sub-grid models into an equilibrium pressure-driven regulation framework. We show that the sub-linear scaling arises as a consequence of the non-linear relationship between scale height and the effective pressure generated by stellar feedback. Thus, simulated star-formation regulation is sensitive to how well vertical structure in the ISM is resolved. Full galaxy disks experience density waves which drive locally time-dependent star formation. We develop a simple time-dependent, pressure-driven model that reproduces the response extremely well.
17 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS
References in corpus (7)
- Star Formation and Feedback in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations--I. Isolated Galaxies
- Slow Star Formation in Dense Gas: Evidence and Implications
- Star Formation in Disk Galaxies. I. Formation and Evolution of Giant Molecular Clouds via Gravitational Instability and Cloud Collisions
- On the interplay between star formation and feedback in galaxy formation simulations
- A Superbubble Feedback Model for Galaxy Simulations
- Dependence of Interstellar Turbulent Pressure on Supernova Rate
- GMC formation by agglomeration and self gravity
Cited by in corpus (20)
- Dynamical Equilibrium in the Molecular ISM in 28 Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies
- First results from SMAUG: Characterization of Multiphase Galactic Outflows from a Suite of Local Star-Forming Galactic Disk Simulations
- Pressure-Regulated, Feedback-Modulated Star Formation In Disk Galaxies
- Inside Out and Upside-Down: The Roles of Gas Cooling and Dynamical Heating in Shaping the Stellar Age-Velocity Relation
- The role of galactic dynamics in shaping the physical properties of giant molecular clouds in Milky Way-like galaxies
- Pressure balance in the multiphase ISM of cosmologically simulated disk galaxies
- EDGE-CALIFA survey: Self-regulation of Star formation at kpc scales
- Code Comparison in Galaxy Scale Simulations with Resolved Supernova Feedback: Lagrangian vs. Eulerian Methods
- The impact of cosmic rays on dynamical balance and disk-halo interaction in Lstar disk galaxies
- Empirically-motivated early feedback: momentum input by stellar feedback in galaxy simulations inferred through observations
- Realistic HI scale heights of Milky Way-mass galaxies in the FIREbox cosmological volume
- VALES VII: Molecular and ionized gas properties in pressure balanced interstellar medium of starburst galaxies at z ~ 0.15
- Fiery Cores: Bursty and Smooth Star Formation Distributions across Galaxy Centers in Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations
- Extreme giant molecular clouds in the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 3256
- Entropy-Conserving Scheme for Modeling Nonthermal Energies in Fluid Dynamics Simulations
- Seeking Self-Regulating Simulations of Idealized Milky Way-Like Galaxies
- Filamentary Hierarchies and Superbubbles I: Characterizing filament properties across a simulated spiral galaxy
- A 260 pc resolution ALMA map of HCN(1-0) in the galaxy NGC 4321
- Star formation drivers across the M33 disk
- The Hierarchical Dynamical State of Molecular Gas from 3 to 300 pc in NGC 253