The Fate of the First Galaxies. I. Self-consistent Cosmological Simulations with Radiative Transfer

By M. Ricotti, Nickolay Y. Gnedin, J. Michael Shull. 2001

148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogonies, low-mass objects play an important role in the evolution of the universe. Not only are they the first luminous objects to shed light in a previously dark universe, but if their formation is not inhibited by their own feedback, they dominate the galaxy mass function until redshift z ~ 5. In this paper we present and discuss the implementation of a three-dimensional cosmological code that includes most of the needed physics to simulate the formation and evolution of the first galaxies with a self-consistent treatment of radiative feedback. The simulation includes continuum radiative transfer using the optically thin variable Eddington tensor (OTVET) approximation and line radiative transfer in the H2 Lyman-Werner bands of the background UV radiation. We include detailed chemistry for H2 formation/destruction, molecular and atomic cooling/heating processes, ionization by secondary electrons, and heating by Lyα resonant scattering. We find that the first galaxies ("small-halo galaxies") are characterized by bursting star formation, self-regulated by a feedback process that acts on cosmological scales. The mass in stars produced by these objects can exceed the mass in stars produced by normal galaxies; therefore, their impact on cosmic evolution cannot be neglected. The main focus of this paper is on the methodology of the simulations, and we only briefly introduce some of the results. An extensive discussion of the results and the nature of the feedback mechanism are the focus of a companion paper.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a9e8aa1e77a4bb1e4d5fc111de64b0be7fe3e0f0

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Citations in the corpus

Suppression of H2 Cooling in the Ultraviolet Background (2007, background): “In all studies that include radiation sources in halos less than 104 K halos, the largest the soft UVB flux can get before the T > 104 K halos dominate the emission is J LW21 1 (see Haiman et al. 2000; Ricotti et al. 2002b, 2002a WA05).”
Escape of Ionizing Radiation from High-Redshift Galaxies (2007, background): “The spectral shape is shown in Figure 4 of Ricotti et al. (2002).”
Simulations of Early Structure Formation: Primordial Gas Clouds (2003, methodology): “Ricotti et al. (2002b) presented extensive tests using a series of simulations and examined the effect of various parameters on the global star formation rate.”
The First Stars (2003, background): “Second, the free electrons in relic H II regions (Oh & Haiman 2003), or inside the outer boundary of a still-active one (Ricotti et al. 2001, 2002a,b), may accomplish the same.”
The first galaxies : assembly, cooling and the onset of turbulence (2008, background): “…formation in a multi-phase, interstellar medium (Thoul & Weinberg 1996; Mac Low & Ferrara 1999; Madau et al. 2001; Mori et al. 2002; Oh & Haiman 2002; Ricotti et al. 2002a,b; Scannapieco et al. 2002; Thacker et al. 2002; Wada & Venkatesan 2003; Dijkstra et al. 2004; Read et al. 2006; Ricotti et…”
Radiation Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn: X-Rays from Compact Binaries (2016, unknown): “…we have modified the standard photoionization rates of species j =H I and He I, Γj = 4π ∫ ∞ Ij JE E σjdE, (25) and computed “enhanced” rates as (see Ricotti et al. 2002; Kuhlen & Madau 2005) Γ̃HI = ΓHI + fHIion IHI ∑ i ni nHI Hi, (26) Γ̃HeI = ΓHeI + fHeIion IHeI ∑ i ni nHeI Hi.…”
Fluctuating feedback-regulated escape fraction of ionizing radiation in low-mass, high-redshift galaxies (2017, background): “…et al. 2006; Wyithe & Cen 2007; Dayal et al. 2008; Mitra et al. 2015; Mutch et al. 2016) or are based on large scale simulations (e.g. Gnedin 2014; Ricotti et al. 2002; Iliev et al. 2006, 2014; Ocvirk et al. 2016), and all of them use fesc directly or indirectly, the fraction of ionizing photons…”
Simulating cosmic reionization: how large a volume is large enough? (2013, background): “…range and the necessity to resolve the low-mass galaxies driving reionization, the earliest numerical simulationsof this period inevitably followed relatively small volumes, typically just a few comoving Mpc per side (Gnedin & Ostriker 1997; Ciardi et al. 2000; Gnedin 2000; Ricotti et al. 2002).”
Effect of Primordial Black Holes on the Cosmic Microwave Background and Cosmological Parameter Estimates (2007, background): “It is not obvious that the star formation efficiency and other internal properties of the first galaxies would be affected because feedback effects such as photo-evaporation from internal sources and SN explosions are probably dominant (Ricotti et al. 2002a,b).”
X-ray pre-ionization powered by accretion on the first black holes – I. A model for the WMAP polarization measurement (2003, methodology): “Note that some cosmological simulations presented here include the effects of SN explosions, using the recipe discussed in Gnedin (1998), in contrast to earlier papers in this series (Ricotti et al. 2002a,b).”
Formation Histories of Dwarf Galaxies in the Local Group (2004, methodology): “By including 3D radiative transfer of ionizing radiation (Ricotti et al 2002a) in the simulations we are able to model two additional feedbacks: the positive feedback for H2 formation and the photoevaporation of dwarfs from internal sources.”
PRE-REIONIZATION FOSSILS, ULTRA-FAINT DWARFS, AND THE MISSING GALACTIC SATELLITE PROBLEM (2008, background): “Star formation in halos this small is possible only before reionization and is widespread if “positive” feedback plays a significant role in regulating star formation in the first galaxies (Ricotti et al. 2001, 2002a, 2002b).”