Testing Galaxy Formation Simulations with Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Abundance and Metallicity Evolution

Abstract

We examine the properties of damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs) emerging from a single set of cosmological initial conditions in two state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamic simulations: {\sc Simba} and {\sc Technicolor Dawn}. The former includes star formation and black hole feedback treatments that yield a good match with low-redshift galaxy properties, while the latter uses multi-frequency radiative transfer to model an inhomogeneous ultraviolet background (UVB) self-consistently and is calibrated to match the Thomson scattering optical depth, UVB amplitude, and Ly-$\alpha$ forest mean transmission at $z>5$. Both simulations are in reasonable agreement with the measured stellar mass and star formation rate functions at $z\ge 3$, and both reproduce the observed neutral hydrogen cosmological mass density, ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{HI}}(z)$. However, the DLA abundance and metallicity distribution are sensitive to the galactic outflows' feedback and the UVB amplitude. Adopting a strong UVB and/or slow outflows under-produces the observed DLA abundance, but yields broad agreement with the observed DLA metallicity distribution. By contrast, faster outflows eject metals to larger distances, yielding more metal-rich DLAs whose observational selection may be more sensitive to dust bias. The DLA metallicity distribution in models adopting an ${\mathrm{H}}_2$-regulated star formation recipe includes a tail extending to $[M/H]\ll -3$, lower than any DLA observed to date, owing to curtailed star formation in low-metallicity galaxies. Our results show that DLA observations play an imporant role in constraining key physical ingredients in galaxy formation models, complementing traditional ensemble statistics such as the stellar mass and star formation rate functions.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (73)

• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• Observational Evidence of AGN Feedback
• Cosmological SPH simulations: A hybrid multi-phase model for star formation
• The Star Formation Efficiency in Nearby Galaxies: Measuring Where Gas Forms Stars Effectively
• Radiative transfer in a clumpy universe: IV. New synthesis models of the cosmic UV/X-ray background
• GIZMO: A New Class of Accurate, Mesh-Free Hydrodynamic Simulation Methods
• Simba: Cosmological Simulations with Black Hole Growth and Feedback
• Cosmological Simulations with TreeSPH
• Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• Gusty, gaseous flows of FIRE: galactic winds in cosmological simulations with explicit stellar feedback
• On the evolution of the HI column density distribution in cosmological simulations
• The Atomic to Molecular Transition in Galaxies. II: HI and H_2 Column Densities
• The Birth of a Galaxy: Primordial Metal Enrichment and Stellar Populations
• Galaxy Stellar Mass Functions from ZFOURGE/CANDELS: An Excess of Low-Mass Galaxies Since z=2 and the Rapid Buildup of Quiescent Galaxies
• A General Class of Lagrangian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Methods and Implications for Fluid Mixing Problems
• The Cosmic Baryon Cycle and Galaxy Mass Assembly in the FIRE Simulations
• The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 3
• P3M-SPH simulations of the Lyman-alpha Forest
• On the Kinematics of the Damped Lyman Alpha Protogalaxies
• The observed ionization rate of the intergalactic medium and the ionizing emissivity at z >5: Evidence for a photon starved and extended epoch of reionization
• Grackle: a Chemistry and Cooling Library for Astrophysics
• Column density distribution and cosmological mass density of neutral gas: Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Data Release 9
• MUFASA: Galaxy Formation Simulations With Meshless Hydrodynamics
• Model-independent insights into the nature of the Lyman-alpha forest and the distribution of matter in the universe
• The Evolution of the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function at z= 4-8: A Steepening Low-mass-end Slope with Increasing Redshift
• On the (Non)Evolution of HI Disks over Cosmic Time
• New Measurements of the Ionizing Ultraviolet Background over 2 < z < 5 and Implications for Hydrogen Reionization
• Metallicity Evolution of Damped Lyman-alpha Systems out to z~5
• Damped Lyman alpha absorbers at high redshift -- large disks or galactic building blocks?
• The Age-Metallicity Relation of the Universe in Neutral Gas: The First 100 Damped Lya Systems
• The first ultraviolet quasar stacked spectrum at z=2.4 from WFC3
• Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations
• Surveys for z > 3 Damped Lyman-alpha Absorption Systems
• Damped Lyman Alpha Systems in Galaxy Formation Simulations
• Radiative and Momentum Based Mechanical AGN Feedback in a 3-Dimensional Galaxy Evolution Code
• New constraints on Lyman-α opacity with a sample of 62 quasars at z > 5.7
• The Neutral Hydrogen Content of Galaxies in Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations
• A Refined Measurement of the Mean Transmitted Flux in the Ly-alpha Forest over 2 < z < 5 Using Composite Quasar Spectra
• The Dust-to-Gas and Dust-to-Metals Ratio in Galaxies from z=0-6
• The Neutral Hydrogen Cosmological Mass Density at z=5
• Neutral hydrogen in galaxy halos at the peak of the cosmic star formation history
• A physical upper limit on the HI column density of gas clouds
• Protogalactic Disk Models of Damped Lya Kinematics
• Through Thick and Thin - HI Absorption in Cosmological Simulations
• The Rapid Decline in Metallicity of Damped Ly-alpha Systems at z~5
• Damped Lyman-alpha absorbers as a probe of stellar feedback
• The Fundamental Plane of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems
• Star formation rate and metallicity of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers in cosmological SPH simulations
• Reproducing the Kinematics of Damped Lyman-alpha Systems
• Black Hole -- Galaxy Correlations in Simba
• An X-ray/SDSS sample (I): multi-phase outflow incidence and dependence on AGN luminosity
• Galactic Outflows and Photoionization Heating in the Reionization Epoch
• The evolution of the star formation rate function in the EAGLE simulations: A comparison with UV, IR and H$\alpha$ observations from z ~ 8 to z ~ 0
• Reionization in Technicolor
• Photo-heating and supernova feedback amplify each other's effect on the cosmic star formation rate
• A New Moment Method for Continuum Radiative Transfer in Cosmological Reionization
• Statistical properties of damped Lyman-alpha systems from Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR12
• Dwarf Galaxy Formation with H2-Regulated Star Formation: II. Gas-Rich Dark Galaxies at Redshift 2.5
• Quasar UV luminosity function evolution up to z=8
• Discovery of the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha system
• Cosmic Reionization On Computers. Properties of the Post-reionization IGM
• A joint model for the emission and absorption properties of damped Lyman alpha absorption systems
• The effect of dust bias on the census of neutral gas and metals in the high-redshift Universe due to SDSS-II quasar colour selection
• Detecting Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Absorbers with Gaussian Processes
• Damped Lyα Absorption Systems in Semi-Analytic Models with Multiphase Gas
• The nature of damped HI absorbers probed by cosmological simulations: satellite accretion and outflows
• Sub-damped Lyman alpha systems in the XQ-100 survey I -- Identification and contribution to the cosmological HI budget
• The Cosmological Bias Factor of Damped Lyman Alpha systems: Dependence on Metal Line Strength
• A New Public Release of the GIZMO Code
• Probing the assembly of dwarf galaxies through cosmic time with damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption spectroscopy
• Modeling Lyman-α Forest Cross-Correlations with LyMAS

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Reproducing sub-millimetre galaxy number counts with cosmological hydrodynamic simulations
• Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers from Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR16Q with Gaussian processes
• Evolution of CIV Absorbers I. The Cosmic Incidence
• Understanding the relation between thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich decrement and halo mass using the SIMBA and TNG simulations
• Cosmic metal density evolution in neutral gas: insights from observations and cosmological simulations
• High-redshift Damped Ly-alpha Absorbing Galaxy Model Reproducing the N(HI)-Z Distribution
• An Orientation Bias in Observations of Submillimetre Galaxies
• Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers and atomic hydrogen in galaxies: the view of the GAEA model
• Modeling Post-Reionization HI Distributions in Fuzzy Dark Matter Cosmologies Using Conditional Normalizing Flows
• Effective Opacity of the Intergalactic Medium from Galaxy Spectra Analysis