Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds

By E. Puchwein, Volker Springel. 2012

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation in representative regions of the Universe typically need to resort to subresolution models to follow some of the feedback processes crucial for galaxy formation. Here, we show that an energy-driven outflow model in which the wind velocity decreases and the wind mass loading increases in low-mass galaxies, as suggested by observations, can produce a good match to the low-mass end of the observed galaxy stellar mass function. The high-mass end can be recovered simultaneously if feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) and a correction for diffuse stellar light plausibly missed in observations are included. At the same time, our model is in good agreement with the stellar mass functions at redshifts z=1 and z=2, and with the observed redshift evolution of the cosmic star formation rate density. In addition, it accurately reproduces the observed gas to stellar mass ratios and specific star formation rates of galaxies as a function of their stellar mass. This agreement with a diverse set of data marks significant progress in hydrodynamically modelling the formation of a representative galaxy population. It also suggests that the mass flux in real galactic winds should strongly increase towards low-mass galaxies. Without this assumption, an overproduction of galaxies at the faint-end of the galaxy luminosity function seems inevitable in our models.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1034266a9b7c0b6d0ee3e9ae69601aeb3e8de3b6

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Towards a more realistic population of bright spiral galaxies in cosmological simulations (2013, background): “The problems at the high mass end could well be explained by the lack of a model for AGN feedback, which could prevent the cooling of large masses of halo gas at low z, which occurs in our models (see e.g. Puchwein & Springel 2013).”
Cold Molecular Outflows in the Local Universe and Their Feedback Effect on Galaxies (2018, background): “…af618@mrao.cam.ac.uk in accounting for the local population of massive passive galaxies and the lack of overmassive galaxies (e.g. Scannapieco & Oh 2004; Springel, di Matteo & Hernquist 2005; Sijacki et al. 2007; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Beckmann et al. 2017).”
Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, background): “They are often employed to study the effects of various models on a particular issue, without explicitly aiming at reproducing a multitude of observations (Oppenheimer & Davé 2006; Choi & Nagamine 2010; Sales et al. 2010; Schaye et al. 2010; Scannapieco et al. 2012; Puchwein & Springel 2013).”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, background): “…on properties defined by the dark matter, such as its local velocity dispersion or halo mass (e.g. Oppenheimer & Davé 2006; Okamoto et al. 2010; Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013, 2014b), which are generally better converged than the properties of the gas.”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, methodology): “…medium (Davé, Finlator & Oppenheimer 2011; Finlator & Davé 2008), lower conversion efficiencies in particular in the regime of disk galaxies (Puchwein & Springel 2013, Sales et al. 2010), reasonable abundances and flatter star formation histories for low mass galaxies and higher gas…”
The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations (2015, methodology): “Simulations adopting this implementation have been used to investigate the establishment of the GSMF (Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013) and the 7 The size evolution of both late- and early-type galaxies will be explored in detail in a forthcoming paper…”
Colours and luminosities of z = 0.1 galaxies in the eagle simulation (2015, background): “…Cole et al. 2000; Henriques et al. 2013; Gonzalez-Perez et al. 2014; Porter et al. 2014) and numerical simulations (e.g. Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Schaye et al. 2015) that appeal to these processes are able to produce model GSMFs that compare…”
Neutral hydrogen in galaxy haloes at the peak of the cosmic star formation history (2014, background): “…slowing down the growth of galaxies, at least below the knee of the galaxy stellar mass function (e.g., Springel & Hernquist 2003a; Murray et al. 2005; Oppenheimer & Davé 2006; Dalla Vecchia & Schaye 2008; Davé et al. 2011; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013; Kannan et al. 2014).”
The impact of angular momentum on black hole accretion rates in simulations of galaxy formation (2013, methodology): “This problem is also seen in the simulations of Puchwein & Springel (2013).”
The eagle simulations of galaxy formation: Public release of halo and galaxy catalogues (2015, background): “This last requirement differentiates eagle from most other cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation projects (e.g. Oppenheimer et al., 2010; Puchwein and Springel, 2013; Vogelsberger et al., 2014; Khandai et al., 2015) and ensures that galactic winds develop without pre-determined mass loading…”
Cosmological simulations of black hole growth: AGN luminosities and downsizing (2013, methodology): “This is most likely a consequence of the thermal energy injection scheme in the ‘radio mode’ adopted in our model (see also Puchwein & Springel 2013 who also overestimate the massive end of the stellar mass function).”
How Stellar Feedback Simultaneously Regulates Star Formation and Drives Outflows (2015, background): “…to satisfy a wide variety of observational constraints (e.g.Oppenheimer & Davé 2006, 2008; Oppenheimer et al. 2010, 2012; Davé et al. 2011a,b, 2013; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Schaye et al. 2015; Ford et al. 2015), although some significant discrepancies between the…”
Galaxies on FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments): stellar feedback explains cosmologically inefficient star formation (2013, methodology): “…SFR or position on the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation – the shape of the galaxy SFH still closely resembles the shape of the halo inflow rate vs. time (for examples of this with other sub-grid models, see Oppenheimer & Davé 2008; Scannapieco et al. 2011; Stinson et al. 2013; Puchwein & Springel 2013).”
Vertical disc heating in Milky Way-sized galaxies in a cosmological context (2015, methodology): “This parametrisation of wind outflows is required in order to reproduce both the stellar mass and oxygen abundances of low mass haloes (Puchwein & Springel 2013).”
Dancing in the dark: galactic properties trace spin swings along the cosmic web (2014, background): “The presence of the feedback from AGN reduces the amount of stars formed in these massive galaxies, allowing them to agree with observations by reducing the stellar mass up to one order of magnitude (Dubois et al. 2013; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Martizzi et al. 2014).”
Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, methodology): “Thirdly, the nonlinear nature of galaxy formation intimately couples black hole accretion with other aspects of feedback, chiefly the regulation of ordinary star formation (Puchwein & Springel 2013).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, methodology): “…scales with the inverse of the wind velocity squared, motivated by energy conservation arguments (see also Oppenheimer & Davé 2008; Okamoto et al. 2010; Puchwein & Springel 2013); and a model for black hole seeding, accretion and feedback that we will describe in more detail in Section 2.4.”
The BAHAMAS project: Calibrated hydrodynamical simulations for large-scale structure cosmology (2016, background): “…of the subgrid prescriptions for feedback, particularly stellar feedback (e.g., Schaye et al. 2010; Scannapieco et al. 2012; Haas et al. 2013; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013; Crain et al. 2015), while the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations (OWLS) project of Schaye et al.…”
A model for cosmological simulations of galaxy formation physics: multi-epoch validation (2013, background): “Puchwein & Springel (2013) reported a good match to the observed stellar mass function with an energy-driven variable wind model, where the wind velocity is derived from the escape velocity of the host halo.”