On the impact of empirical and theoretical star formation laws on galaxy formation

By C. Lagos, C. Lacey, C. Baugh, Richard G. Bower, A. J. B. Icc, Durham, Caltech. 2010

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the consequences of applying different star formation laws in the galaxy formation model galform. Three broad star formation laws are implemented: the empirical relations of Kennicutt and Schmidt and Blitz & Rosolowsky and the theoretical model of Krumholz, McKee & Tumlinson. These laws have no free parameters once calibrated against observations of the star formation rate (SFR) and gas surface density in nearby galaxies. We start from published models, and investigate which observables are sensitive to a change in the star formation law, without altering any other model parameters. We show that changing the star formation law (i) does not significantly affect either the star formation history of the universe or the galaxy luminosity functions in the optical and near-infrared, due to an effective balance between the quiescent and burst star formation modes, (ii) greatly affects the cold gas contents of galaxies and (iii) changes the location of galaxies in the SFR versus stellar mass plane, so that a second sequence of ‘passive’ galaxies arises, in addition to the known ‘active’ sequence. We show that this plane can be used to discriminate between the star formation laws.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1b683b6fac7011b3d31b9257adb019e7061c9cb

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Molecular hydrogen abundances of galaxies in the EAGLE simulations (2015, methodology): “This opportunity has been exploited using semi-analytic models which, when coupled with a star formation law that relates the SFR directly to the content of H2, reproduce many of the above correlations (e.g. Fu et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011b,a, 2014b Popping et al. 2014).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “The effect of this is nicely demonstrated by Lagos et al. (2011), who use SDSS data to show that the host galaxies of optically-obscured AGN are skewed toward edge-on orientations, while those optically-classified as Type 1 have a much higher probability of having a face-on orientation.”
Star formation in semi-analytic galaxy formation models with multiphase gas (2015, methodology): “For example, the BR+Big1 model treats gas partitioning and conversion of H2 to stars using similar recipes to the BR model of Lagos et al. (2011b) and the “Bigiel + H2 prescription 2” of Fu et al. (2012).”
Lightcone mock catalogues from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation – I. Construction and application to the BzK colour selection (2012, background): “…merger history of a galaxy and makes predictions for many galaxy properties including luminosities over a substantial wavelength range extending from the far-UV through to the submillimetre (Baugh et al. 2005; Lacey et al. 2008, 2010; Lagos et al. 2011a; Fanidakis et al. 2011; Lagos et al. 2012).”
An ALMA survey of sub-millimetre Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: the far-infrared properties of SMGs (2013, methodology): “To provide a more detailed comparison of the contribution of galaxies with different star formation rates, we also overlay the model predictions from Lagos et al. (2011) and Lagos et al. (2013) for galaxies with star formation rates > 100M⊙ yr−1 (which provide a reasonable match to the > 1mJy…”
Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with spectral energy distribution modelling (2015, background): “Star formation in the model is split into quiescent star formation that occurs in galaxy disks and bursts of star formation that are triggered by galaxy mergers and disk instabilities (Baugh et al. 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Lagos et al. 2011).”
The relation between metallicity, stellar mass and star formation in galaxies: an analysis of observational and model data (2011, methodology): “Lagos et al. (2011) have recently implemented star formation laws dependent on the surface density of molecular gas into the GALFORM SAM.”
Cosmic evolution of the atomic and molecular gas contents of galaxies (2011, methodology): “We study the evolution of the cold gas content of galaxies by splitting the ISM into atomic and molecular hydrogen components in theGALFORM semi-analytical model of galaxy formation (Cole et al. 2000; Benson et al. 2003; Baugh et al. 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Benson & Bower 2010; Lagos et al. 2011).”
How sensitive are predicted galaxy luminosities to the choice of stellar population synthesis model (2013, methodology): “Following Lagos et al. (2011b), in our model the star formation law explicitly distinguishes between the atomic and molecular phases of the neutral hydrogen in the inter stellar medium.”
A unified multiwavelength model of galaxy formation (2015, methodology): “These dependencies of gas contents on mass and redshift are analysed in more detail in Lagos et al. (2011a, 2014a).”
Evolution of the atomic and molecular gas content of galaxies (2013, background): “Using their preferred model, Lagos et al. (2011a) find an evolution in the Hi and H2 mass functions, gas fractions and H2 density of the universe very similar to our results.”
Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey - II. Molecular and total gas scaling relations (2014, background): “…for cosmological studies based on semi-analytic models of galaxy evolution, now able to tracethe evolution of the different gas phases (Gnedin et al. 2009; Dutton 2009; Dutton & van den Bosch 2009; Fu et al. 2010; Power et al. 2010; Cook et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011a,b; Kauffmann et al. 2012).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “Overall, it appears that the main predictions of SAMs, especially for stellar properties of galaxies, are quite insensitive to the details of the gas partitioning recipe (Berry et al. 2014, Fu et al. 2010, Lagos et al. 2011b, Popping et al. 2014b, Somerville et al. 2014).”
A unified model for galactic discs: star formation, turbulence driving, and mass transport (2017, background): “…indicate regions of transport-driven versus feedback-driven turbulence; see the main text for details. this fraction on halo mass and redshift is highly complex and substantially uncertain (e.g. Obreschkow et al. 2009; Fu et al. 2010; Lagos et al. 2011; Krumholz & Dekel 2012; Forbes et al. 2014a).”