Regulation of Star Formation by a Hot Circumgalactic Medium

Abstract

Galactic outflows driven by supernovae (SNe) are thought to be a powerful regulator of a galaxy's star-forming efficiency. Mass, energy, and metal outflows (${\eta }_M$, ${\eta }_E$, and ${\eta }_Z$, here normalized by the star formation rate, the SNe energy and metal production rates, respectively) shape galaxy properties by both ejecting gas and metals out of the galaxy and by heating the circumgalactic medium (CGM), preventing future accretion. Traditionally, models have assumed that galaxies self-regulate by ejecting a large fraction of the gas which enters the interstellar medium (ISM), even though such high mass-loadings are in growing tension with observations. To better understand how the relative importance of ejective (i.e. high mass-loading) vs preventative (i.e. high energy-loading) feedback affects the present-day properties of galaxies, we develop a simple gas-regulator model of galaxy evolution, where the stellar mass, ISM, and CGM are modeled as distinct reservoirs which exchange mass, metals, and energy at different rates within a growing halo. Focusing on the halo mass range from $10^{10}$ to $10^{12}{M}_{\odot }$, we demonstrate that, with reasonable parameter choices, we can reproduce the stellar-to-halo mass relation and the ISM-to-stellar mass relation with low mass-loaded (${\eta }_M\sim 0.1-10$) but high energy-loaded (${\eta }_E\sim 0.1-1$) winds, with self-regulation occurring primarily through heating and cooling of the CGM. We show that the model predictions are robust against changes to the mass-loading of outflows but are quite sensitive to our choice of the energy-loading, preferring ${\eta }_E\sim 1$ for the lowest mass halos and $\sim 0.1$ for Milky Way-like halos.

19 pages, 9 Figures, submitted to ApJ

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