Formation of Globular Clusters in Hierarchical Cosmology

By Andrey V. Kravtsov, O. Gnedin. 2003

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We study the formation of globular clusters in a Milky Way-size galaxy using a high-resolution cosmological simulation. The clusters in our model form in the strongly baryon-dominated cores of supergiant molecular clouds in the gaseous disks of high-redshift galaxies. The properties of clusters are estimated using a physically motivated subgrid model of the isothermal cloud collapse. The first clusters in the simulation form at z ≈ 12, while we conjecture that the best conditions for globular cluster formation appear to be at z ~ 3-5. Most clusters form in the progenitor galaxies of the virial mass Mh > 109 M☉, and the total mass of the cluster population is strongly correlated with the mass of its host galaxy: MGC = 3 × 106 M☉(Mh/1011 M☉)1.1. This corresponds to a fraction ~2 × 10-4 of the galactic baryons being in the form of globular clusters. In addition, the mass of the globular cluster population and the maximum cluster mass in a given region strongly correlate with the local average star formation rate. We find that the mass, size, and metallicity distributions of the globular cluster population identified in the simulation are remarkably similar to the corresponding distributions of the Milky Way globular clusters. We find no clear mass-metallicity or age-metallicity correlations for the old clusters. The zero-age mass function of globular clusters can be approximated by a power law dN/dM ∝ M-α with α ≈ 2, in agreement with the mass function of young stellar clusters in starbursting galaxies. We discuss in detail the origin and universality of the globular cluster mass function. Our results indicate that globular clusters with properties similar to those of observed clusters can form naturally within dense gaseous disks at z ≳ 3 in the concordance ΛCDM cosmology.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6aa81f521724787f2491e878774ee56a1174b6e2

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Citations in the corpus

Bursting and quenching in massive galaxies without major mergers or AGNs (2007, background): “It shows as a function of halo mass the fraction of cold gas within the virial radius and outside the disc in dark matter haloes from cosmological simulations by A. Kravtsov (described in Kravtsov 2003; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005, where they were used for other purposes).”
Globular Cluster Systems in Brightest Cluster Galaxies: Bimodal Metallicity Distributions and the Nature of the High-Luminosity Clusters (2005, background): “An excellent recent overview on globular cluster formation models is given by Kravtsov & Gnedin (2005).”
Globular cluster systems in nearby dwarf galaxies – III. Formation efficiencies of old globular clusters (2010, background): “This value is identical to the η−values obtained by us, Kravtsov & Gnedin (2005) and Spitler & Forbes (2009), ηh = 2 − 5 × 10−5 and 7.1 × 10−5, respectively.”
MODELING THE METALLICITY DISTRIBUTION OF GLOBULAR CLUSTERS (2010, methodology): “We based it on the rate derived in Kravtsov & Gnedin (2005): MGC = 3 × 106 M (1 + p2) Mg/fb 1011 M .”
N-body modelling of globular clusters: masses, mass-to-light ratios and intermediate-mass black holes (2016, background): “Globular clusters are among the oldest structures in the universe, having formed within 1 to 2 Gyr after the Big Bang (Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005).”
Chemical tagging with APOGEE: Discovery of a large population of N-rich stars in the inner Galaxy (2016, background): “It is now generally agreed that most globular clusters formed in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) generated by disk instabilities in galaxies at z >∼ 2 (e.g., Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Shapiro et al. 2010; Tonini 2013; Kruijssen 2014; Rossi & Hurley 2015; Kruijssen 2015).”
The SLUGGS Survey: kinematics for over 2500 globular clusters in 12 early-type galaxies (2012, background): “A possible consensus scenario may arise from the idea that part of the red GCs might have formed during the early turbulent phases of galaxy formation at z ∼ 2 (Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Shapiro et al. 2010).”
Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND): Observational Phenomenology and Relativistic Extensions (2011, background): “In ΛCDM, this dichotomy is rather explained by the formation history [235, 397]: globular clusters are supposedly formed in primordial disk-bound supermassive molecular clouds with high baryon-to-dark matter ratio, and later become more spheroidal due to subsequent mergers.”
Globular clusters, satellite galaxies and stellar haloes from early dark matter peaks (2005, background): “…and compared with data (Kauffmann, White & Guiderdoni 1993; Bullock, Kravtsov & Weinberg 2000; Côté et al. 2000; Moore 2001; Freeman & Bland-Hawthorn 2002; Benson et al. 2002; Côté, West & Marzke 2002; Somerville, Bullock & Livio 2003; Kravtsov, Gnedin & Klypin 2004; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005).”
On the fraction of star formation occurring in bound stellar clusters (2012, background): “The differences between young cluster populations and these old globular clusters would then be caused by differences in the birth environment (e.g. Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Elmegreen 2010; Shapiro, Genzel & Förster Schreiber 2010; Kruijssen et al. 2012b) and a Hubble time of dynamical evolution…”
Properties of stellar generations in globular clusters and relations with global parameters (2010, unknown): “…Searle & Zinn 1978; Fall & Rees 1985; Cayrel 1986; Freeman 1990; Brown et al. 1991, 1995; Ashman & Zepf 1992; Murray & Lin 1992; Bromm & Clarke 2002; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Saitoh et al. 2006; Bekki & Chiba 2002, 2007; Bekki et al. 2007; Hasegawa et al. 2009; Marcolini et al. 2009; Hartwick 2009).”
The evolution of massive black holes and their spins in their galactic hosts (2012, background): “…2005; Scannapieco et al. 2009; Dotti et al. 2007; Dotti, Colpi, & Haardt 2006; Dotti et al. 2009, 2010a; Maio et al. 2012; O’Shea et al. 2004; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Tassis et al. 2003; Tassis, Kravtsov, & Gnedin 2008; Dubois & Teyssier 2008; Blecha et al. 2011; Guedes et al. 2011;…”
THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM IN DISTANT STAR-FORMING GALAXIES: TURBULENT PRESSURE, FRAGMENTATION, AND CLOUD SCALING RELATIONS IN A DENSE GAS DISK AT z = 2.3 (2011, background): “The resulting regions of high-pressure ISM may be conducive to the formation of massive globular clusters, as first postulated by Harris & Pudritz (1994), a model which has since been developed extensively (e.g. Elmegreen & Efremov 1997; Schweizer et al. 1996; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005).”
The life cycle of star clusters in a tidal field (2011, background): “This is an oversimplification, because in the hierarchical merging scenario clusters can form in dwarf galaxies that are later accreted in larger haloes (Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Prieto & Gnedin 2008; Mackey et al. 2010).”
Multiple populations in globular clusters (2012, background): “The resulting scenario is one where probably all globular clusters, and not only the most massive ones (see Carretta et al. 2010a; Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005; Böker 2008), formed at the centre of larger systems.”
Extragalactic Globular Clusters and Galaxy Formation (2006, background): “The high-resolution simulation of Kravtsov & Gnedin (2005) offers a glimpse of what should be possible in the future.”
CO-EVOLUTION OF GALACTIC NUCLEI AND GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEMS (2013, methodology): “For globular clusters, Spitler & Forbes (2009) and Harris et al. (2013) showed thatMGC ≈ 6× 10−5 Mh across four orders of magnitude in galaxy mass (this scaling was first predicted in theoretical models using cosmological simulations by Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005).”
The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, background): “Just like for stars, it is also possible that some fraction of the globular clusters formed in situ, perhaps during early gas-rich mergers that were presumably extremely common in the past (Kravtsov & Gnedin 2005).”