Star formation losses due to tidal debris in `hierarchical' galaxy formation

Abstract

Bottom-up hierarchical formation of dark matter haloes is not as monotonic as implicitly assumed in the Press-Schechter formalism: matter can be ejected into tidal tails, shells or low density `atmospheres'. The implications that the possible truncation of star formation in these tidal `debris' may have for observational galaxy statistics are examined here using the ArFus N-body plus semi-analytical galaxy modelling software. Upper and lower bounds on stellar losses implied by a given set of N-body simulation output data can be investigated by choice of the merging/identity criterion of haloes between successive N-body simulation output times. A median merging/identity criterion is defined and used to deduce an upper estimate of possible star formation and stellar population losses. A largest successor merging/identity criterion is defined to deduce an estimate which minimises stellar losses. In the N-body simulations studied, the debris losses are short range in length and temporary; maximum loss is around 16%. The induced losses for star formation and luminosity functions are strongest (losses of 10%-30%) for low luminosity galaxies and at intermediate redshifts (1 < z < 3). This upper bound on likely losses is smaller than present observational uncertainties. Hence, Press-Schechter based galaxy formation models are approximately valid despite ignoring loss of debris, provided that dwarf galaxy statistics are not under study.

arXiv comment17 pages, 14 figures, accepted for Astronomy & Astrophysics

References in corpus (24)

• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• High Redshift Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field. Color Selection and Star Formation History to z=4
• Lyman Break Galaxies at z>4 and the Evolution of the UV Luminosity Density at High Redshift
• The CANADA-FRANCE REDSHIFT SURVEY XIII: The luminosity density and star-formation history of the Universe to z ~ 1
• Clustering of Galaxies in a Hierarchical Universe: I. Methods and Results at z=0
• A Recipe for Galaxy Formation Shaun Cole
• The Structure of Dark Matter Haloes in Hierarchical Clustering Models
• Galaxies in N-body simulations: overcoming the overmerging problem
• The Evolution of the Global Star Formation History as Measured from the Hubble Deep Field
• The history of star formation in dusty galaxies
• Infared Observations of Nebular Emission Lines from Galaxies at z = 3
• Galaxy Formation and Large-Scale Bias
• Semi-analytic modelling of galaxy evolution in the IR/submm range
• The Ha Luminosity Function and Star Formation Rate at z\sim 0.2
• Tidal tails in CDM cosmologies
• An Ultraviolet-Selected Galaxy Redshift Survey: New Estimates of the Local Star Formation Rate
• Origin and evolution of halo bias in linear and non-linear regimes
• The seeds of rich galaxy clusters in the Universe
• Using Tidal Tails to Probe Dark Matter Halos
• Modelling the evolution of galaxy clustering
• Merging History Trees of Dark Matter Haloes: a Tool for Exploring Galaxy Formation Models
• The Current Star Formation Rate of the Local Universe
• Merger trees and the multiplicity function of halos
• Merging History Trees for Dark Matter Halos: Tests of the Merging Cell Model in a CDM Cosmology

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Cool ISM in S0 Galaxies. I. A Survey of Molecular Gas
• Virialisation-induced curvature as a physical explanation for dark energy
• Deep redshift topological lensing: strategies for the T^3 candidate