The challenge of simulating the star cluster population of dwarf galaxies with resolved interstellar medium

Abstract

We present results on the star cluster properties from a series of high resolution smoothed particles hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of isolated dwarf galaxies as part of the GRIFFIN project. The simulations at sub-parsec spatial resolution and a minimum particle mass of 4 ${\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ incorporate non-equilibrium heating, cooling and chemistry processes, and realise individual massive stars. All the simulations follow feedback channels of massive stars that include the interstellar-radiation field, that is variable in space and time, the radiation input by photo-ionisation and supernova explosions. Varying the star formation efficiency per free-fall time in the range ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$ = 0.2 - 50$\%$ neither changes the star formation rates nor the outflow rates. While the environmental densities at star formation change significantly with ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$, the ambient densities of supernovae are independent of ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$ indicating a decoupling of the two processes. At low ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$, more massive, and increasingly more bound star clusters are formed, which are typically not destroyed. With increasing ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$ there is a trend for shallower cluster mass functions and the cluster formation efficiency $\Gamma$ for young bound clusters decreases from $50\%$ to $\sim 1\%$ showing evidence for cluster disruption. However, none of our simulations form low mass ($<10^3$ ${\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$) clusters with structural properties in perfect agreement with observations. Traditional star formation models used in galaxy formation simulations based on local free-fall times might therefore not be able to capture low mass star cluster properties without significant fine-tuning.

17 pages, 13 figures. Accepted to be published in MNRAS. Comments welcome

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