Gusty, gaseous flows of FIRE: Galactic winds in cosmological simulations with explicit stellar feedback

By A. Muratov, D. Keres̆, C. Faucher-Giguére, P. Hopkins, E. Quataert, N. Murray. 2015

455 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analysis of the galaxy-scale gaseous outflows from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) simulations. This suite of hydrodynamic cosmological zoom simulations resolves formation of star-forming giant molecular clouds to z = 0, and features an explicit stellar feedback model on small scales. Our simulations reveal that high-redshift galaxies undergo bursts of star formation followed by powerful gusts of galactic outflows that eject much of the interstellar medium and temporarily suppress star formation. At low redshift, however, sufficiently massive galaxies corresponding to L* progenitors develop stable discs and switch into a continuous and quiescent mode of star formation that does not drive outflows far into the halo. Mass-loading factors for winds in L* progenitors are η ≈ 10 at high redshift, but decrease to η ≪ 1 at low redshift. Although lower values of η are expected as haloes grow in mass over time, we show that the strong suppression of outflows with decreasing redshift cannot be explained by mass evolution alone. Circumgalactic outflow velocities are variable and broadly distributed, but typically range between one and three times the circular velocity of the halo. Much of the ejected material builds a reservoir of enriched gas within the circumgalactic medium, some of which could be later recycled to fuel further star formation. However, a fraction of the gas that leaves the virial radius through galactic winds is never regained, causing most haloes with mass M_h ≤ 10^(12) M_⊙ to be deficient in baryons compared to the cosmic mean by z = 0.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2f66356516e2eb2b2a8826b0c55dbae78d6fa8c

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

The Local Group on FIRE: dwarf galaxy populations across a suite of hydrodynamic simulations (2018, background): “…includes explicit models for star formation and stellar/supernovae feedback that self-consistently yield bursty star formation in dwarf galaxies (Muratov et al. 2015; El-Badry et al. 2016; Sparre et al. 2017; Faucher-Giguère 2018) and overall agreement with a variety of galaxy-scale…”
The impact of baryonic physics on the structure of dark matter haloes: the view from the FIRE cosmological simulations (2015, background): “…difficult as it requires that more than 20% of the available energy is coupled to dark matter, which is unlikely given the indirect connection via the change of gravitational potential and that a large fraction of this energy is in heavily mass loaded winds that move rapidly (Muratov et al. 2015).”
The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, background): “…at low redshift, circumgalactic gas tends to be more well mixed, with instantaneous velocities having little bearing on the origin or fate of a particular pocket of gas (Ford et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015; Christensen et al. 2016), though this is also seen at z = 3 (van de Voort et al. 2012).”
Neutral hydrogen in galaxy haloes at the peak of the cosmic star formation history (2014, methodology): “Furthermore, Muratov et al. (2015) show that outflows correlate well with star formation bursts (albeit with a time delay ∼ 30− 100 Myr).”
Not so lumpy after all: modelling the depletion of dark matter subhaloes by Milky Way-like galaxies (2017, background): “…000, 1–19 (2017) wide variety of observables, including the relationships between stellar mass and halo mass, the Kennicutt-Schmidt law, bursty star formation histories, the star forming main sequence (Hopkins et al. 2014), galactic winds (Muratov et al. 2015, 2016), the gas and stellar phase M?”
RECONCILING DWARF GALAXIES WITH ΛCDM COSMOLOGY: SIMULATING A REALISTIC POPULATION OF SATELLITES AROUND A MILKY WAY–MASS GALAXY (2016, background): “Previous FIRE cosmological simulations of isolated dwarf galaxies have reproduced several key observables: realistic galactic outflows (Muratov et al. 2015), Mstarmetallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016), Mstar-size relation (El-Badry et al. 2016), cored dark-matter profiles (Oñorbe et al. 2015; Chan…”
FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, background): “FIRE cosmological simulations of dwarf galaxies have reproduced several key observables, including realistic galactic outflows (Muratov et al. 2015), the mass-metallicity relation (Ma et al. 2016), the mass-size relation and age/metallicity gradients (El-Badry et al. 2016), cored dark-matter…”
The origin and evolution of the galaxy mass–metallicity relation (2015, background): “These simulations also predict reasonable covering fractions of neutral hydrogen in the halos of z = 2–3 LBGs (Faucher-Giguère et al. 2015) and self-consistently generate galactic winds with velocities and mass loading factors broadly consistent with observational requirements (Muratov et al. 2015).”
The difficulty of getting high escape fractions of ionizing photons from high-redshift galaxies: A view from the FIRE cosmological simulations (2015, result): “…physics self-consistently generate galactic winds with velocities and mass loading factors broadly consistent with observational requirements (Muratov et al. 2015) and are in good agreement with the observed covering fractions of neutral hydrogen in the halos of z = 2–3 LBGs (Faucher-Giguere…”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, methodology): “In an updated incarnation of the ’decoupled’ wind model Davé, Thompson & Hopkins (2016) have used scaling from high-resolution cosmological zoom simulations (Muratov et al. 2015) to set the mass-loading and wind velocities.”
Probing Galactic Halos with Fast Radio Bursts (2019, background): “Such feedback is frequently invoked to match semi-analytic models or computer simulations of galaxy formation to observed luminosity functions (e.g. Somerville & Davé 2015; Muratov et al. 2015; Christensen et al. 2018).”
FIRE-2 simulations: physics versus numerics in galaxy formation (2017, background): “In both sets of simulations, galaxies drive strong winds, with higher mass-loading in low mass galaxies, sufficient to place galaxies on the observed relationship between stellar mass and halo mass (Hopkins et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015; Hayward & Hopkins 2017).”
RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “…of feedback that ultimately control the galaxy formation process (e.g., Murray et al. 2005; Faucher-Giguère et al. 2013; Hopkins et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015), and they dominate the bolometric luminosity of rapidly forming galaxies, whether most of the luminosity emerges in the UV or is…”
Forged in FIRE: cusps, cores and baryons in low-mass dwarf galaxies (2015, result): “…in these simulations could be due to the fact that their sub-grid ISM and star formation model leads to star formation histories that are (likely) artificially smoothed in time, compared to the bursty star formation histories found in more explicit models (Hopkins et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015).”
Stellar and Quasar Feedback in Concert: Effects on AGN Accretion, Obscuration, and Outflows (2015, unknown): “In a series of papers (Hopkins et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015; Oñorbe et al. 2015; van de Voort et al. 2015; Ma et al. 2015b,a; Faucher-Giguere et al. 2015), we showed that, on galactic scales, these models produce a quasi-steady ISM in which molecular clouds form and disperse rapidly, with phase…”
Black holes on FIRE: stellar feedback limits early feeding of galactic nuclei (2017, methodology): “…in FIRE simulations, in which early bursty star formation transitions to long-lived gaseous discs with more time-steady star formation in more massive and lower-redshift galaxies (Muratov et al. 2015; Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2017b; Faucher-Giguère 2017; Hayward & Hopkins 2017; Ma et al. 2017a,b).”
The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, methodology): “…al. 2009a; Faucher-Giguère et al. 2011; van de Voort et al. 2011), powerful winds evacuate gas from galaxies (Oppenheimer & Davé 2008; Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2014; Muratov et al. 2015, 2016), and outflowing gas often re-accretes back onto galaxies (Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Christensen et al. 2016).”
First results from the TNG50 simulation: galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback (2019, methodology): “In the context of the more realistic FIRE model, Muratov et al. (2015) presented measurements of the scaling of mass loading (and outflow velocity) which decrease (increase) strongly with M?, such that lowermass progenitors at early times would have had much higher mass loadings than their present…”