Star formation sustained by gas accretion

By J. Sánchez Almeida, Bruce G. Elmegreen, C. Muñoz-Tuñón, D. Elmegreen. 2014

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Numerical simulations predict that metal-poor gas accretion from the cosmic web fuels the formation of disk galaxies. This paper discusses how cosmic gas accretion controls star formation, and summarizes the physical properties expected for the cosmic gas accreted by galaxies. The paper also collects observational evidence for gas accretion sustaining star formation. It reviews evidence inferred from neutral and ionized hydrogen, as well as from stars. A number of properties characterizing large samples of star-forming galaxies can be explained by metal-poor gas accretion, in particular, the relationship among stellar mass, metallicity, and star-formation rate (the so-called fundamental metallicity relationship). They are put forward and analyzed. Theory predicts gas accretion to be particularly important at high redshift, so indications based on distant objects are reviewed, including the global star-formation history of the universe, and the gas around galaxies as inferred from absorption features in the spectra of background sources.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4024b5ec07a13fc1765060be45067dcd484464df

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Citations in the corpus

The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, background): “Smooth accretion of fresh gas from the IGM, albeit difficult to detect, is required to sustain the observed star formation rate (SFR) in galaxies across cosmic time (Erb 2008; Tacconi et al. 2010; Putman et al. 2012; Sánchez Almeida et al. 2014).”
LoCuSS: THE SLOW QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER GALAXIES AND THE NEED FOR PRE-PROCESSING (2015, background): “…gas accreted onto the galaxy via cold, dense filamentary streams at all redshifts (van de Voort et al. 2011), the radius of peak halo mass marks the end of continual gas replenishment of the ISM, signaling the beginning of the end for star formation in the host galaxy (Sánchez Almeida et al. 2014).”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, methodology): “…numerical experiments and analytic models provide some support for the general idea (e.g. Finlator & Davé 2008; Schaye et al. 2010; Booth & Schaye 2010; Davé et al. 2012; Haas et al. 2013a,b; Feldmann 2013; Dekel et al. 2013; Altay et al. 2013; Lilly et al. 2013; Sánchez Almeida et al. 2014).”
SDSS IV MaNGA – metallicity and nitrogen abundance gradients in local galaxies (2017, background): “…than the metallicity floor of ∼ 1% Z , found in metal-poor galaxies in the local Universe (Izotov et al. 2006; Morales-Luis et al. 2011), which is ex- pected to be set by direct accretion of gas from the cosmic web at z∼0 (Danforth & Shull 2005; Arnaud et al. 1994; Sánchez Almeida et al. 2014).”