Galaxy evolution in cosmological simulations with outflows ― I. Stellar masses and star formation rates

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

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the growth of the stellar content of galaxies from z = 3 → 0 in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations incorporating parametrized galactic outflows. Without outflows, galaxies overproduce stellar masses (M * ) and star formation rates (SFRs) compared to observations. Winds introduce a three-tier form for the galaxy stellar mass and star formation rate functions, where the middle tier depends on the differential (i.e. mass-dependent) recycling of ejected wind material back into galaxies. A tight M * ―SFR relation is a generic outcome of all these simulations and its evolution is well described as being powered by cold accretion, although current observations at z ≳ 2 suggest that the star formation in small early galaxies must be highly suppressed. Roughly, one-third of z = 0 galaxies at masses below M * are satellites and the star formation in satellites is not much burstier than in centrals. All models fail to suppress the star formation and stellar mass growth in massive galaxies at z ≲ 2, indicating the need for an external quenching mechanism such as black hole feedback. All models also fail to produce dwarfs as young and rapidly star forming as observed. An outflow model following scalings expected for momentum-driven winds broadly matches the observed galaxy evolution around M * from z = 0 to 3, which is a significant success since these galaxies dominate cosmic star formation, but the failures at higher and lower masses highlight the challenges still faced by this class of models. We argue that central star-forming galaxies are well described as living in a slowly evolving equilibrium between inflows from gravity and recycled winds, star formation, and strong and ubiquitous outflows that regulate how much inflow forms into stars. Star-forming galaxy evolution is thus primarily governed by the continual cycling of baryons between galaxies and intergalactic gas.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/54f2ce8353ba4dd41d9c61b52b6f214e88f5980a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. R. Somerville
5. Volker Springel
6. C. Conroy
7. A. Dekel
8. P. V. van Dokkum

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. C. Conroy
5. R. Somerville
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. M. Franx
8. A. Dekel

Citations in the corpus

• THE BARYON CENSUS IN A MULTIPHASE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM: 30% OF THE BARYONS MAY STILL BE MISSING (2011, methodology): “The SPH models by Davé & Oppenheimer (2009) and Davé et al. (2011) find IGM phases with markedly different temperatures and metallicities, but we believe these results arise from their metalinjection schemes and the lack of mixing.”
• Galaxies on FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments): stellar feedback explains cosmologically inefficient star formation (2013, result): “For this reason we see the same relation even in our simulations without feedback, as have other simulations with different feedback prescriptions (see Kereš et al. 2009; Davé et al. 2011).”
• 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.”
• Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “…of the accretion rate fluctuation scenario, since a galaxy that undergoes an uptick in accretion will increase its SFR and gas content, owing to a larger gas supply, and lower its metallicity since the accreted gas (or infalling galaxy) will tend to have lower metallicity (Davé et al. 2011a).”
• A model for cosmological simulations of galaxy formation physics: multi-epoch validation (2013, background): “Over the last several years, a large body of results based on hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation have been obtained (e.g., Ocvirk et al. 2008; Crain et al. 2009; Schaye et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011; McCarthy et al. 2012; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Kannan et al. 2013).”
• KECK SPECTROSCOPY OF 3 < z < 7 FAINT LYMAN BREAK GALAXIES: THE IMPORTANCE OF NEBULAR EMISSION IN UNDERSTANDING THE SPECIFIC STAR FORMATION RATE AND STELLAR MASS DENSITY (2012, background): “…Hubble Fellow 3 Cahill Center of Astronomy & Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, MS 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125 4 Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ early galaxies (e.g., Finlator et al. 2011; Davé et al. 2011, 2012).”
• VERY STRONG EMISSION-LINE GALAXIES IN THE WFC3 INFRARED SPECTROSCOPIC PARALLEL SURVEY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES, (2011, background): “The shape and evolution of this relationship is interpreted as the result of smooth gas accretion (Bouché et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011).”
• DEMOGRAPHICS AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF GAS OUTFLOWS/INFLOWS AT 0.4 < z < 1.4 (2012, background): “At least in some models, however, recyling of the metals carried to large distances by winds substantially increases the metallicity of the infalling gas (Oppenheimer et al. 2008; Davé et al. 2011b).”
• Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds (2012, methodology): “Davé et al. (2011b) used an updated version of the Oppenheimer & Davé (2006) momentum-driven model in which the galaxy velocity dispersion is instead estimated based on halo masses computed by an on-the-fly friend-of-friend group finder (Oppenheimer & Davé 2008).”
• 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).”
• A fundamental problem in our understanding of low-mass galaxy evolution (2012, methodology): “Interestingly, these momentum-driven wind models seem to suffer from similar problems as the semianalytic models mentioned above regarding the evolution of the mass function and the star formation rates (Davé 2008; Davé et al. 2011a).”
• 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).”
• 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…”
• The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, background): “…2014; Agertz & Kravtsov 2015a; Ma et al. 2016a), and reproduce key observables including the galaxy stellar mass function (Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011a; Vogelsberger et al. 2014), the mass–metallicity relation (Davé et al. 2011b; Torrey et al. 2014; Ma et al. 2016b), and the metal…”
• THE CHARACTERISTIC STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 2–7 (2012, background): “From the theoretical standpoint, hydrodynamical simulations find mean mass-loading factors of at least a factor of a few for galaxies with stellar masses at the low end of those found in our sample (M∗ ∼ 10 9 M⊙), and being less than unity for the most massive galaxies (Oppenheimer & Davé 2006, 200”
• An Older, More Quiescent Universe from Panchromatic SED Fitting of the 3D-HST Survey (2018, background): “Indeed, many galaxy formation models have long been in tension with the observed SFRs at 1<z<3, roughly at the factor-of-two level (Bouché et al. 2010; Firmani et al. 2010; Davé et al. 2011; Lilly et al. 2013; Dekel & Burkert 2014; Genel et al. 2014; Mitchell et al. 2014).”