EVOLVING GRAVITATIONALLY UNSTABLE DISKS OVER COSMIC TIME: IMPLICATIONS FOR THICK DISK FORMATION

By John C. Forbes, Mark R. Krumholz, A. Burkert. 2011

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Observations of disk galaxies at z ∼ 2 have demonstrated that turbulence driven by gravitational instability can dominate the energetics of the disk. We present a one-dimensional simulation code, which we have made publicly available, that economically evolves these galaxies from z ∼ 2 to z ∼ 0 on a single CPU in a matter of minutes, tracking column density, metallicity, and velocity dispersions of gaseous and multiple stellar components. We include an H2-regulated star formation law and the effects of stellar heating by transient spiral structure. We use this code to demonstrate a possible explanation for the existence of a thin and thick disk stellar population and the age–velocity-dispersion correlation of stars in the solar neighborhood: the high velocity dispersion of gas in disks at z ∼ 2 decreases along with the cosmological accretion rate, while at lower redshift the dynamically colder gas forms the low velocity dispersion stars of the thin disk.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

Yule-Simpson’s paradox in Galactic Archaeology (2019, background): “…(e.g., Minchev et al. 2012, 2014a; Vera-Ciro et al. 2014; Grand et al. 2016, see also discussion in §1), except in redistributing stars heated by external mechanisms (Quinn et al. 1993; Villalobos & Helmi 2008) or turbulent gas clouds at high redshift (Bournaud et al. 2009; Forbes et al. 2012).”
Estimating stellar birth radii and the time evolution of Milky Way’s ISM metallicity gradient (2018, background): “MCM13 argued that it was a combination of both stars born hot at high redshift (Bournaud et al. 2009; Forbes et al. 2012) and subsequent heating from mergers (Brook et al. 2004) that created the kinematically defined thick disk.”
Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology (2016, background): “…is that the stars comprising thick discs are born thick at high redshift from internal gravitational instabilities in gas-rich, turbulent, clumpy discs (Bournaud et al., 2009; Forbes et al., 2012) or in the turbulent phase associated with numerous gas-rich mergers (Brook et al., 2005, 2004).”
A unified model for galactic discs: star formation, turbulence driving, and mass transport (2017, methodology): “…that include radial transport of gas via gravitational instability are able to reproduce this qualitative behaviour (e.g. Cacciato et al. 2012; Forbes et al. 2012; Forbes et al. 2014a; Stevens, Croton & Mutch 2016; Tonini et al. 2016), but the analytic model we develop here allows a…”
Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk - I. The solar vicinity (2012, background): “One possibility is that thick disks were born thick at high redshift from the internal gravitational instabilities ingas-rich, turbulent, clumpy disks (Bournaud et al., 2009; Forbes et al., 2012) or in the turbulent phase associated with numerous gasrich mergers (Brook et al., 2004, 2005).”
INSIDE OUT AND UPSIDE DOWN: TRACING THE ASSEMBLY OF A SIMULATED DISK GALAXY USING MONO-AGE STELLAR POPULATIONS (2013, background): “Forbes et al. (2012) have proposed a similar model for the origin of the thin/thick transition, based on one-dimensional simulations that track the evolution of turbulence in the star-forming gas.”
A LINK BETWEEN STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND INNER STELLAR MASS DENSITY IN SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY CENTRAL GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “As an alternative, we cite the analytic toy model of Forbes et al. (2012), which models the rather modest effects of gravitational disk instabilities.”
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONO-ABUNDANCE AND MONO-AGE STELLAR POPULATIONS IN THE MILKY WAY DISK (2016, background): “…heating from infalling satellites (e.g., Villalobos and Helmi 2008; Quinn et al. 1993), turbulent gas-rich disk phase at high redshift (e.g., Bournaud et al. 2009; Forbes et al. 2012), massive gas-rich satellites (Brook et al. 2004, 2005), and accretion of satellite debris (Abadi et al. 2003).”
DIRECT NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF RADIATION PRESSURE-DRIVEN TURBULENCE AND WINDS IN STAR CLUSTERS AND GALACTIC DISKS (2012, background): “Instead, it might be driven by gravitational instabilities in ULIRG disks (Krumholz & Burkert 2010; Forbes et al. 2012), and be maintained by the energy of inward gas mass through the galactic potential rather than by stellar feedback.”
The age structure of stellar populations in the solar vicinity Clues of a two-phase formation history of the Milky Way disk (2013, background): “…high SFRs over several Gyr in the Milky Way disk: multiple accretion of gas-rich companions (Brook et al. 2004; House et al. 2011), gas accretion from filaments (Kereš et al. 2009), gravitational instabilities (Forbes et al. 2012), gas cooling in the halo, and recycling of the gas from outflows.”
THE STELLAR POPULATION STRUCTURE OF THE GALACTIC DISK (2015, background): “The simplified one-dimensional simulations of a thin, axisymmetric, gravitationally-unstable disk by Forbes et al. (2012) similar to the turbulent disks found in cosmological simulations (e.g., Bournaud et al. 2009) do lead to donut-like mono-age populations by shutting off the gas supply of the…”