An analytic model for the evolution of the stellar, gas and metal content of galaxies

By R. Dav'e, K. Finlator, B. Oppenheimer. 2011

424 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analytic formalism that describes the evolution of the stellar, gas and metal content of galaxies. It is based on the idea, inspired by hydrodynamic simulations, that galaxies live in a slowly evolving equilibrium between inflow, outflow and star formation. We argue that this formalism broadly captures the behaviour of galaxy properties evolving in simulations. The resulting equilibrium equations for the star formation rate, gas fraction and metallicity depend on three key free parameters that represent ejective feedback, preventive feedback and reaccretion of ejected material. We schematically describe how these parameters are constrained by models and observations. Galaxies perturbed off the equilibrium relations owing to inflow stochasticity tend to be driven back towards equilibrium, such that deviations in star formation rate at a given mass are correlated with gas fraction and anticorrelated with metallicity. After an early gas accumulation epoch, quiescently star-forming galaxies are expected to be in equilibrium over most of cosmic time. The equilibrium model provides a simple intuitive framework for understanding the cosmic evolution of galaxy properties, and centrally features the cycle of baryons between galaxies and surrounding gas as the driver of galaxy growth.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20856883c256f85045bd32d15916fb77c7395b88

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Citations in the corpus

COMBINED CO AND DUST SCALING RELATIONS OF DEPLETION TIME AND MOLECULAR GAS FRACTIONS WITH COSMIC TIME, SPECIFIC STAR-FORMATION RATE, AND STELLAR MASS (2014, background): “In a matter dominated Universe (applicable at high-z) the depletion time should then be proportional to (1+z) -3/2 (see Davé et al. 2011), which is inconsistent with our results.”
De re metallica: the cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies (2018, methodology): “…al. (2018) at z ∼ 2.3 can be interpreted either as a limited but systematic increase in the mass loading 66 Maiolino R., Mannucci F. factors of the outflowing gas for a given stellar mass, or with the decrease with redshift of the average metal abundance of the inflowing gas (Davé et al., 2011).”
Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4 (2013, methodology): “2007; Finlator & Davé 2008; Arrigoni et al. 2009; Calura et al. 2009; Calura & Menci 2009; Davé et al. 2011b; Sakstein et al. 2011; Davé et al. 2012; Dayal et al. 2013).”
THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION WITH THE DIRECT METHOD ON STACKED SPECTRA OF SDSS GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “The interplay between these three processes is complex, so hydrodynamic galaxy simulations (e.g., Brooks et al. 2007; Finlator & Davé 2008; Davé et al. 2011a, 2011b) and analytic models (e.g., Peeples & Shankar 2011; Davé et al. 2012) have been used to establish a framework to interpret the…”
The confinement of star-forming galaxies into a main sequence through episodes of gas compaction, depletion and replenishment (2015, background): “All, hydrodynamic simulations of galaxies (e.g., Davé et al. 2011; Dekel et al. 2013; Torrey et al. 2014; Sparre et al. 2015), semi-analytical models (e.g., Dutton et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2012; Mitchell et al. 2014) and analytical models (e.g., Bouché et al. 2010; Dekel et al. 2013; Lilly et…”
Molecular and atomic gas along and across the main sequence of star-forming galaxies (2016, background): “…of galaxies, and how it is replenished by inflows and depleted by star formation and outflows (e.g. White & Frenk 1991; Bouché et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011, 2012; Krumholz & Dekel 2012; Lilly et al. 2013), are well supported by observations of the redshift evolution of the molecular…”
Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “Similarly, Davé et al. (2010) showed that SMGs that are fueled primarily from accretion from the IGM (rather than via major mergers) could still show somewhat disrupted disks, due to the sporadic nature of gas accretion.”
THE MOSDEF SURVEY: EXCITATION PROPERTIES OF z ∼ 2.3 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…abundance measurements in hand, it will be possible to determine the evolution of the shape and normalization of the MZR in a robust fashion over at least 10 Gyr, with important implications for understanding the nature of gas flows in galaxies (Finlator & Davé 2008; Davé et al. 2011, 2012).”
VALIDATION OF THE EQUILIBRIUM MODEL FOR GALAXY EVOLUTION TO z ∼ 3 THROUGH MOLECULAR GAS AND DUST OBSERVATIONS OF LENSED STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2013, background): “This measurement at z > 2 suggests that the redshift-dependence of the molecular gas depletion time for main sequence galaxies, as predicted analytically (e.g. Davé et al. 2011, 2012) and recently observed up to z ∼ 1.5 (Tacconi et al. 2013), extends to z ∼ 3.”
The star formation main sequence and stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation (2014, background): “Several attempts have been made to reproduce the SFMS in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies (e.g. Davé et al. 2011; Torrey et al. 2014) and (semi-)analytical models (e.g. Dutton et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2012; Dekel et al. 2013).”
THE MOSDEF SURVEY: MASS, METALLICITY, AND STAR-FORMATION RATE AT z ∼ 2.3 (2014, background): “Alternatively, in the equilibrium model of Finlator & Davé (2008) and Davé et al. (2011, 2012), outflows remove some metals, but have a more important effect of decreasing the fraction of inflowing gas from the intergalactic medium that is able to form stars and produce metals.”
A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, background): “The difference between these models is that Davé et al. (2012) assume an ‘equilibrium condition’, whereby the inflow rate is balanced by the sum of the star formation and outflow rates (this is sometimes referred to as the ‘reservoir’ or ‘bathtub model’ – see Bouché et al. 2010; Krumholz & Dekel…”
PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, background): “…formation rate, galaxy size/internal structure, gas motions and environmental parameters (e.g. Daddi et al. 2010a, b, Tacconi et al. 2010, 2013, Genzel et al. 2010, 2015, Bouché et al. 2010, Lilly et al. 2013, Davé et al. 2011, 1012, Lagos et al. 2011, 2015a,b, Fu et al. 2012, Popping et al. 2015).”