Feedback and recycled wind accretion: assembling the z= 0 galaxy mass function

By B. Oppenheimer, R. Dav'e, D. Kerevs, Mark A. Fardal, Neal Katz, Juna A. Kollmeier, D. Weinberg. 2009

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We analyse cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that include theoretically and observationally motivated prescriptions for galactic outflows. If these simulated winds accurately represent winds in the real Universe, then material previously ejected in winds provides the dominant source of gas infall for new star formation at redshifts z < 1. This recycled wind accretion, or wind mode, provides a third physically distinct accretion channel in addition to the 'hot' and 'cold' modes emphasized in recent theoretical studies. The recycling time of wind material (t rec ) is shorter in higher mass systems owing to the interaction between outflows and the increasingly higher gas densities in and around higher mass haloes. This differential recycling plays a central role in shaping the present-day galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF), because declining t rec leads to increasing wind mode galaxy growth in more massive haloes. For the three feedback models explored, the wind mode dominates above a threshold mass that primarily depends on wind velocity; the shape of the GSMF therefore can be directly traced back to the feedback prescription used. If we remove all particles that were ever ejected in a wind, then the predicted GSMFs are much steeper than observed. In this case, galaxy masses are suppressed both by the ejection of gas from galaxies and by the hydrodynamic heating of their surroundings, which reduces subsequent infall. With wind recycling included, the simulation that incorporates our favoured momentum-driven wind scalings reproduces the observed GSMF for stellar masses 10 9 M ⊙ M ≤ 5 × 10 10 M ⊙ . At higher masses, wind recycling leads to excessive galaxy masses and star formation rates relative to observations. In these massive systems, some quenching mechanism must suppress not only the direct accretion from the primordial intergalactic medium but the re-accretion of gas ejected from star-forming galaxies. In short, as has long been anticipated, the form of the GSMF is governed by outflows; the unexpected twist here for our simulated winds is that it is not primarily the ejection of material but how the ejected material is re-accreted that governs the GSMF.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d843546669da097c06432e893ddc75a0b43b5b07

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Citations in the corpus

An analytic model for the evolution of the stellar, gas and metal content of galaxies (2011, background): “At large masses, wind recycling (Ṁrecyc) returns material to the galaxy rapidly once the wind speed (680 km/s in the upper right, 340 km/s in the lower right) drops below the escape velocity (Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
The SILCC (SImulating the LifeCycle of molecular Clouds) project – I. Chemical evolution of the supernova-driven ISM (2014, background): “…of galactic winds, which play an important role for regulating spiral galaxy evolution on larger spatial and temporal scales at all cosmic epochs (Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Aumer et al. 2013; Hirschmann et al. 2013; Stinson et al. 2013; Brook et al. 2014; Hopkins et al. 2014; Marinacci, Pakmor &…”
The rates and modes of gas accretion on to galaxies and their gaseous haloes (2010, background): “If winds are able to blow gas out of the galaxy, but not out of the halo, as may be the case for high-mass haloes, then the same gas elements may be accreted on to the galaxy more than once (Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
The Neutral Hydrogen Cosmological Mass Density at z = 5 (2015, background): “3, the H I phase must be continually replenished by more highly ionized gas, presumably through a combination of cold-mode accretion (e.g. Dekel et al. 2009) and recycled winds (e.g. Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, background): “…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).”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “In addition, at low redshift a moderately constant gas accretion rate onto spiral galaxies can be sustained by enriched gas that has been cycling within the halo of the galaxy (Christensen et al. 2016, Oppenheimer et al. 2010, Übler et al. 2014).”
Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the galaxy stellar mass function at z < 0.06 (2011, background): “Galaxy formation theory must explain the preferred mass for star formation efficiency, the shallow low-mass end slope compared to the halo mass function, and the exponential cutoff a high masses (Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
The SILCC project - III. Regulation of star formation and outflows by stellar winds and supernovae (2016, background): “…with high volume-filling factors (Ferrière 2001; Kalberla & Dedes 2008; Walch et al. 2015), which may launch powerful outflows from galactic discs (e.g. Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Creasey, Theuns & Bower 2013; Hopkins et al. 2014; Marinacci et al. 2014; Peters et al. 2015; Girichidis et al. 2016a).”
THE COS-DWARFS SURVEY: THE CARBON RESERVOIR AROUND SUB-L* GALAXIES (2014, background): “Previous work has shown that this model predicts a stellar mass function that is too steep (Oppenheimer et al. 2010) and a present-day sSFR distribution that is too low for lowmass galaxies (Davé et al. 2011).”
SIMULATIONS OF DISK GALAXIES WITH COSMIC RAY DRIVEN GALACTIC WINDS (2013, background): “…and semi-analytic models, which show that dependence η ∝ vαcirc with α ∼ 1 − 2 is needed to reproduce the observed faint end of the galaxy stellar mass function and other properties of the galaxy population (e.g., Somerville et al. 2008; Schaye et al. 2010; Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Dutton 2012).”
The origin and evolution of the galaxy mass–metallicity relation (2015, background): “During this process, a considerable fraction of the gas and metals that have been formerly ejected via outflows eventually come back to the galaxy (e.g. Bertone et al. 2007; Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
Stellar Feedback in Galaxies and the Origin of Galaxy-scale Winds (2011, background): “Oppenheimer & Davé (2006) and Oppenheimer et al. (2010) find that an average scaling Ṁwind/Ṁ∗ ∝ V −1c produces reasonably good agreement with the observed mass functions at different redshifts,1 with a normalization such that a Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mass dwarf has a mass loading…”
Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds (2012, background): “They demonstrated that this model can roughly reproduce the faint-end of the GSMF (also see Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Choi & Nagamine 2011) and the specific star formation rates of galaxies in the 1010 − 1011M⊙ stellar mass range.”
The impact of baryonic physics on the structure of dark matter haloes: the view from the FIRE cosmological simulations (2015, background): “Brook et al. (2012) showed that a large fraction of the gas that is expelled returns via a large-scale galactic fountain (see also Oppenheimer et al. 2010) to form stars at later times: this greatly increases the chance of outflows from the inner regions and further helps in core formation.”
A sub-parsec resolution simulation of the Milky Way: global structure of the interstellar medium and properties of molecular clouds (2013, background): “Note that our velocity kicks do not have heuristic values and the radiative feedback is not related to the binding energy of the clump, contrarily to Oppenheimer & Davé (2006), Oppenheimer et al. (2010) or Hopkins et al. (2011).”
THE GASEOUS ENVIRONMENT OF HIGH-z GALAXIES: PRECISION MEASUREMENTS OF NEUTRAL HYDROGEN IN THE CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM OF z ∼ 2–3 GALAXIES IN THE KECK BARYONIC STRUCTURE SURVEY (2012, background): “Oppenheimer & Davé (2008) and Oppenheimer et al. (2010) studied the fate of winds using cosmological simulations and found that while galactic winds are likely responsible for the metallic species seen in the IGM, much of the outflowing gas may be bound to galaxies and may fall back in.”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, background): “…on properties defined by the dark matter, such as its local velocity dispersion or halo mass (e.g. Oppenheimer & Davé 2006; Okamoto et al. 2010; Oppenheimer et al. 2010; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013, 2014b), which are generally better converged than the properties of the…”
First results from the TNG50 simulation: galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback (2019, background): “Notably, Oppenheimer et al. (2010) studied SN wind-driving models in early cosmological simulations, emphasizing the importance of recycling and the dependence of recycled accretion on the balance between mass loading and outflow velocity.”