Radiative feedback and the low efficiency of galaxy formation in low-mass haloes at high redshift

By D. Ceverino, Anatoly Klypin, E. Klimek, Sebastian Trujillo-Gomez, C. Churchill, Joel R. Primack, A. Dekel. 2013

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Any successful model of galaxy formation needs to explain the low rate of star formation in the small progenitors of today's galaxies. This inefficiency is necessary for reproducing the low stellar-to-virial mass fractions, suggested by current abundance matching models. A possible driver of this low efficiency is the radiation pressure exerted by ionizing photons from massive stars. The effect of radiation pressure in cosmological, zoom-in galaxy formation simulations is modeled as a non-thermal pressure that acts only in dense and optically thick star-forming regions. We also include photoionization and photoheating by massive stars. The full photoionization of hydrogen reduces the radiative cooling in the $10^{4-4.5}$ K regime. The main effect of radiation pressure is to regulate and limit the high values of gas density and the amount of gas available for star formation. This maintains a low star formation rate of $\sim 1 \ {\rm M_\odot} \ {\rm yr}^{-1}$ in halos with masses about $10^{11} \ {M_\odot}$ at $z\simeq3$. Infrared trapping and photoionization/photoheating processes are secondary effects in this mass range. The galaxies residing in these low-mass halos contain only $\sim0.6\%$ of the total virial mass in stars, roughly consistent with abundance matching. Radiative feedback maintains an extended galaxy with a rising circular velocity profile.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c316c99b4573e802da1358d2891169b25513e39

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Citations in the corpus

Evolution of density profiles in high-z galaxies: compaction and quenching inside-out (2015, background): “Radiative stellar feedback is implemented at a moderate level, following Dekel & Krumholz (2013), as described in Ceverino et al. (2014).”
Four phases of angular-momentum buildup in high-z galaxies: from cosmic-web streams through an extended ring to disc and bulge (2014, background): “…they properly trace the cosmological streams that feed galaxies at high redshift, including mergers and smooth flows, and they resolve the VDI that governs the high-z disc evolution and plays an important role in bulge formation (Ceverino et al. 2010, 2012, 2014b; Mandelker et al. 2014).”
A Redshift-independent Efficiency Model: Star Formation and Stellar Masses in Dark Matter Halos at z ≳ 4 (2018, background): “This simulation includes a prescription for the thermalenergy and radiative feedback (as a local approximation of radiation pressure; Ceverino et al. 2014) for the injection of momentum coming from the (unresolved) expansion of gaseous shells from supernovae and stellar winds (Ostriker & Shetty…”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “For example, Enzo merger simulations by Kim et al. (2009) and H-ART cosmological zoom simulations by Ceverino et al. (2014) both achieved a dynamic range of >∼ 10 6, while the most ambitious current SPH simulations can only achieve ∼ 105.”
Neutral hydrogen in galaxy haloes at the peak of the cosmic star formation history (2014, background): “…redshifts or outside the halo mass range for which the models were tuned (e.g., Stinson et al. 2007; Governato et al. 2010; Guedes et al. 2011; Brooks et al. 2011; Torrey et al. 2014, but see Stinson et al. 2013 and Ceverino et al. 2014 for other models that compare favorably to observations).”
Compaction and quenching of high-z galaxies in cosmological simulations: blue and red nuggets (2014, methodology): “A decomposition of the stellar component in every snapshot of each galaxy into disc and spheroid has been carried out based on kinematics (as in Ceverino et al. 2014a).”
Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, background): “Figure 6 shows the evolutionary tracks in Σ1 and Σe vs. mass for the Vela set of 35 simulations described in Ceverino et al. (2014) and Zolotov et al. (2015).”
The confinement of star-forming galaxies into a main sequence through episodes of gas compaction, depletion and replenishment (2015, methodology): “…incorporates the physics of gas and metal cooling, UV-background photoionization, stochastic star formation, gas recycling and metal enrichment, and thermal feedback from supernovae (Ceverino et al. 2010, 2012), plus a new implementation of feedback from radiation pressure (Ceverino et al. 2014).”
Galaxy morphology and star formation in the Illustris Simulation at z = 0 (2015, background): “Similarly, Moody et al. (2014a) created and analyzed mock HST images from very high-resolution cosmological simulations of clumpy disc galaxies (Ceverino et al. 2014).”