Self-regulated star formation in galaxies via momentum input from massive stars

By P. Hopkins, E. Quataert, N. M. Berkeley, Cita. 2011

386 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Feedback from massive stars is believed to play a critical role in shaping the galaxy mass function, the structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) and the low efficiency of star formation, but the exact form of the feedback is uncertain. In this paper, the first in a series, we present and test a novel numerical implementation of stellar feedback resulting from momentum imparted to the ISM by radiation, supernovae and stellar winds. We employ a realistic cooling function, and find that a large fraction of the gas cools to ≲100 K, so that the ISM becomes highly inhomogeneous. Despite this, our simulated galaxies reach an approximate steady state, in which gas gravitationally collapses to form giant ‘molecular’ clouds (GMCs), dense clumps and stars; subsequently, stellar feedback disperses the GMCs, repopulating the diffuse ISM. This collapse and dispersal cycle is seen in models of Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)-like dwarfs, the Milky Way and z∼ 2 clumpy disc analogues. The simulated global star formation efficiencies are consistent with the observed Kennicutt–Schmidt relation. Moreover, the star formation rates are nearly independent of the numerically imposed high-density star formation efficiency, density threshold and density scaling. This is a consequence of the fact that, in our simulations, star formation is regulated by stellar feedback limiting the amount of very dense gas available for forming stars. In contrast, in simulations without stellar feedback, i.e. under the action of only gravity and gravitationally induced turbulence, the ISM experiences runaway collapse to very high densities. In these simulations without feedback, the global star formation rates exceed observed galactic star formation rates by 1–2 orders of magnitude, demonstrating that stellar feedback is crucial to the regulation of star formation in galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/537b2d223e2ce1c55b228f73670fc9b33b39aa3e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. Volker Springel
4. E. Quataert
5. T. Naab
6. R. Dav'e
7. C. Faucher-Giguére
8. A. Dekel

Citations in the corpus

• Cuspy No More: How Outflows Affect the Central Dark Matter and Baryon Distribution in Lambda CDM Galaxies (2012, background): “…be a common outcome of any feedback scheme that can create such flows (Springel et al. 2005; Kereš et al. 2009; Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Choi & Nagamine 2011; Hopkins et al. 2011) as long as sufficient spatial resolution and high SF surface densi- c© 2002 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–12 ties are achieved.”
• Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds (2012, background): “…resolve all the relevant processes that govern the formation of stars in galaxies and their backreaction on the interstellar medium (ISM), even though remarkable progress towards this goal has recently been made for simulations of isolated galaxies (Hopkins et al. 2011, 2012; Guedes et al. 2011).”
• Dark matter cores all the way down (2015, background): “This illustrates that order of magnitude changes in simulation parameters have no significant effect on our conclusions (see also e.g. Saitoh et al. 2008; Hopkins et al. 2011).”
• ON THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN STAR FORMATION AND FEEDBACK IN GALAXY FORMATION SIMULATIONS (2014, background): “Similar results were found by Aumer et al. (2013) who considered a momentum based model of radiation pressure, although with the value of the infrared optical depth of τIR ∼ 25, larger than in the models by Hopkins et al. (2011) and Agertz et al. (2013).”
• Stellar and Quasar Feedback in Concert: Effects on AGN Accretion, Obscuration, and Outflows (2015, methodology): “When stars form, stellar feedback is included from a variety of mechanisms, as described in detail in Hopkins et al. (2011, 2012c).”
• Black hole evolution – I. Supernova-regulated black hole growth (2015, background): “We should also consider the steady input of energy from stellar winds and radiation from bright OB associations (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2011) with dedicated simulations to probe their effect on the BH growth.”
• Neutral hydrogen in galaxy haloes at the peak of the cosmic star formation history (2014, methodology): “These calculations have been used to study the origin of the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation (Hopkins et al. 2011), the structure of the ISM and the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs; Hopkins et al. 2012c), galactic winds driven by stellar feedback (Hopkins et al. 2012b), gas inflow in gas rich…”
• (Star)bursts of FIRE: observational signatures of bursty star formation in galaxies (2015, methodology): “We refer the reader to Hopkins et al. (2011, 2012) for details regarding and extensive tests of the stellar feedback models and to Hopkins et al. (2014) for details of the stellar feedback model as implemented in the FIRE simulations.”
• SHORT-LIVED STAR-FORMING GIANT CLUMPS IN COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS OF z ≈ 2 DISKS (2010, background): “It remains to be better understood how this occurs on sub-clump scales based on improved physical models (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2011).”
• Feedback-regulated star formation in molecular clouds and galactic discs (2013, methodology): “This is supported by numerical simulations of galaxies including Milky Way and Small Magellanic Cloud analogs in which the disc-averaged star formation law is insensitive to the small-scale star formation prescription (Hopkins et al. 2011).”
• THE COSMOLOGICAL SIZE AND VELOCITY DISPERSION EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, background): “…Debuhr et al. 2010; Ostriker et al. 2010; Schaye et al. 2010), radiative feedback from stars (e.g Oppenheimer & Davé 2006; Petkova & Springel 2009; Hopkins et al. 2011) and feedback from supernovae type II (e.g Scannapieco et al. 2008; Schaye et al. 2010; Sales et al. 2010) and Ia (e.g Ciotti &…”
• Understanding the shape and diversity of dwarf galaxy rotation curves in ΛCDM (2016, background): “…capture the momentum injection into the interstellar medium (ISM) generated by expanding bubbles of shock heated gas (e.g. Kimm et al. 2015); and (ii) star formation becomes self-regulated by stellar feedback (e.g. Kravtsov 2003; Saitoh et al. 2008; Hopkins et al. 2011, 2013; Agertz et al. 2013).”
• The role of dwarf galaxy interactions in shaping the Magellanic System and implications for Magellanic Irregulars (2012, methodology): “…molecular gas formation in subresolution models, direct modelling of processes that self-regulate formation of molecular clouds, their star formation and related feedback requires more a complex ISM model and resolution that is beyond the simulations used in this work (Hopkins et al. 2011).”
• Making Galaxies in a Cosmological Context: The Need for Early Stellar Feedback (2012, background): “Hopkins et al. (2011) incorporated a kinetic radiation pressure feedback into simulations of isolated disk galaxies and found that the feedback could strongly regulate star formation.”