We introduce the Making Galaxies In a Cosmological Context (MAGICC) programme of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. We describe a parameter study of galaxy formation simulations of an L* ...galaxy that uses early stellar feedback combined with supernova feedback to match the stellar mass-halo mass relationship. While supernova feedback alone can reduce star formation enough to match the stellar mass-halo mass relationship, the galaxy forms too many stars before z = 2 to match the evolution seen using abundance matching. Our early stellar feedback is purely thermal and thus operates like an ultraviolet ionization source as well as providing some additional pressure from the radiation of massive, young stars. The early feedback heats gas to >106 K before cooling it to 104 K. The pressure from this hot gas creates a more extended disc and prevents more star formation prior to z = 1 than supernova feedback alone. The resulting disc galaxy has a flat rotation curve, an exponential surface brightness profile, and matches a wide range of disc scaling relationships. The disc forms from the inside-out with an increasing exponential scale length as the galaxy evolves. Overall, early stellar feedback helps to simulate galaxies that match observational results at low and high redshifts.
Using cosmological galaxy formation simulations from the MaGICC (Making Galaxies in a Cosmological Context) project, spanning stellar mass from ~10... to 3 x 10... M..., we trace the baryonic cycle ...of infalling gas from the virial radius through to its eventual participation in the star formation process. An emphasis is placed upon the temporal history of chemical enrichment during its passage through the corona and circumgalactic medium. We derive the distributions of time between gas crossing the virial radius and being accreted to the star-forming region (which allows for mixing within the corona), as well as the time between gas being accreted to the star-forming region and then ultimately forming stars (which allows for mixing within the disc). Significant numbers of stars are formed from gas that cycles back through the hot halo after first accreting to the star-forming region. Gas entering high-mass galaxies is pre-enriched in low-mass proto-galaxies prior to entering the virial radius of the central progenitor, with only small amounts of primordial gas accreted, even at high redshift (z ... 5). After entering the virial radius, significant further enrichment occurs prior to the accretion of the gas to the star-forming region, with gas that is feeding the star-forming region surpassing 0.1 Z... by z = 0. Mixing with halo gas, itself enriched via galactic fountains, is thus crucial in determining the metallicity at which gas is accreted to the disc. The lowest mass simulated galaxy (M... ~ 2 x 10... M..., with M... ~ 10... M...), by contrast, accretes primordial gas through the virial radius and on to the disc, throughout its history. Much like the case for classical analytical solutions to the so-called 'G-dwarf problem', overproduction of low-metallicity stars is ameliorated by the interplay between the time of accretion on to the disc and the subsequent involvement in star formation - i.e. due to the inefficiency of star formation. Finally, gas outflow/metal removal rates from star-forming regions as a function of galactic mass are presented. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
We investigate the interplay between jets from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM) through full 3D, high-resolution, adaptive mesh refinement simulations ...performed with the flash code. We follow the jet-ISM system for several Myr in its transition from an early, compact source to an extended one including a large cocoon. During the jet evolution, we identify three major evolutionary stages and we find that, contrary to the prediction of popular theoretical models, none of the simulations shows a self-similar behaviour. We also follow the evolution of the energy budget, and find that the fraction of input power deposited into the ISM (the AGN coupling constant) is of the order of a few per cent during the first few Myr. This is in broad agreement with galaxy formation models employing AGN feedback. However, we find that in these early stages, this energy is deposited only in a small fraction (<1 per cent) of the total ISM volume. Finally, we demonstrate the relevance of backflows arising within the extended cocoon generated by a relativistic AGN jet within the ISM of its host galaxy, previously proposed as a mechanism for self-regulating the gas accretion on to the central object. These backflows tend later to be destabilized by the 3D dynamics, rather than by hydrodynamic (Kelvin-Helmholtz) instabilities. Yet, in the first few hundred thousand years, backflows may create a central accretion region of significant extent, and convey there as much as a few millions of solar masses.
Quasars (QSOs) represent the brightest active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the Universe and are thought to indicate the location of prodigiously growing black holes (BHs), with luminosities as high as ...1048 erg s−1. It is often expected though that such an extremely energetic process takes place in the most massive bound structures in the dark matter (DM) distribution. We show that in contrast to this expectation, in a galaxy formation model which includes AGN feedback, QSOs are predicted to live in DM haloes with typical masses of a few times 1012 M. Such an environment is considered to be average in the low-redshift universe (z 2-3) and almost comparable to a Milky Way halo. This fundamental prediction arises from the fact that QSO activity (i.e. BH accretion with luminosity greater than 1046 erg s−1) is inhibited in more massive DM haloes, where AGN feedback operates. The galactic hosts of QSOs in our simulations have typical stellar masses of 1010-1011 M, and represent remnants of massive disc galaxies that have undergone a disc instability or galaxy merger. Interestingly, we find no dependence of QSO activity on environment; thus, the typical QSO halo mass remains constant over two orders of magnitude in luminosity. We further show that the z ∼ 6 QSOs do not inhabit the largest DM haloes at that time as these environments are already subject to feedback. Their descendants at z = 0 span a wide range of morphologies and galaxy masses, and their BHs typically grow only by a modest factor between z ∼ 6 and the present day. We predict that there should be an enhancement in the abundance of galaxies around QSOs at z ∼ 5. However, these enhancements are considerably weaker compared to the overdensities expected at the extreme peaks of the DM distribution. Given that high-z QSO descendants are typically found in rich clusters (∼1014 M) and very seldom in the most massive haloes, we conclude that it is very unlikely that QSOs observed at z 5 trace the progenitors of today's superclusters.
ABSTRACT
We have analysed two cosmological zoom simulations with $M_{\rm vir}\sim 10^{12}{\rm \, M}_\odot$ from the Numerical Investigation of a Hundred Astrophysical Objects (NIHAO) series, both ...with and without feedback. We show that an entropy criterion based on the equation of state of the intergalactic medium can successfully separate cold- and hot-mode accretion. The shock-heated gas has non-negligible turbulent support and cools inefficiently. In the simulations without feedback, only a small fraction (≲20 per cent) of the stellar mass comes from baryons that have been in the hot circumgalactic medium, although quantitative conclusions should be taken with caution due to our small-number statistics. With feedback, the fraction is larger because of the reaccretion of gas heated by supernovae, which has lower entropies and shorter cooling times than the gas heated by accretion shocks. We have compared the results of NIHAO to predictions of the GalICS 2.1 semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. The shock-stability criterion implemented in GalICS 2.1 successfully reproduces the transition from cold- to hot-mode accretion.
We present the Dark MaGICC (Making Galaxies in a Cosmological Context) project, which aims to investigate the effect of dark energy (DE) modelling on disc galaxy formation via hydrodynamical ...cosmological simulations. Dark MaGICC includes four dynamical DE scenarios with time varying equations of state, one with a self-interacting Ratra–Peebles model. In each scenario, we simulate three disc galaxies with high resolution using smoothed particle hydrodynamics. The baryonic physics model is the same used in the MaGICC project, and we varied only the background cosmology. We find that the DE parametrization has a surprisingly important impact on galaxy evolution and on structural properties of galaxies at z = 0, in striking contrast with predictions from pure N-body simulations. The different background evolutions can (depending on the behaviour of the DE equation of state) either enhance or quench star formation with respect to a Λ cold dark matter model, at a level similar to the variation of the stellar feedback parametrization, with strong effects on the final galaxy rotation curves. While overall stellar feedback is still the driving force in shaping galaxies, we show that the effect of the DE parametrization plays a larger role than previously thought, especially at lower redshifts. For this reason, the influence of DE parametrization on galaxy formation must be taken into account, especially in the era of precision cosmology.
We study how X-rays from stellar binary systems and the hot intracluster medium (ICM) affect the radiative cooling rates of gas in galaxies. Our study uses a novel implementation of gas cooling in ...the moving-mesh hydrodynamics code arepo. X-rays from stellar binaries do not affect cooling at all as their emission spectrum is too hard to effectively couple with galactic gas. In contrast, X-rays from the ICM couple well with gas in the temperature range 104–106 K. Idealized simulations show that the hot halo radiation field has minimal impact on the dynamics of cooling flows in clusters because of the high virial temperature ( ≳ 107 K), making the interaction between the gas and incident photons very ineffective. Satellite galaxies in cluster environments, on the other hand, experience a high radiation flux due to the emission from the host halo. Low-mass satellites ( ≲ 1012 M⊙) in particular have virial temperatures that are exactly in the regime where the effect of the radiation field is maximal. Idealized simulations of satellite galaxies including only the effect of host halo radiation (no ram pressure stripping or tidal effects) fields show a drastic reduction in the amount of cool gas formed (∼40 per cent) on a short time-scale of about 0.5 Gyr. A galaxy merger simulation including all the other environmental quenching mechanisms, shows about 20 per cent reduction in the stellar mass of the satellite and about ∼30 per cent reduction in star formation rate after 1 Gyr due to the host hot halo radiation field. These results indicate that the hot halo radiation fields potentially play an important role in quenching galaxies in cluster environments.
ABSTRACT
Numerical simulations within a cold dark matter (DM) cosmology form haloes whose density profiles have a steep inner slope (‘cusp’), yet observations of galaxies often point towards a flat ...central ‘core’. We develop a convolutional mixture density neural network model to derive a probability density function (PDF) of the inner density slopes of DM haloes. We train the network on simulated dwarf galaxies from the NIHAO and AURIGA projects, which include both DM cusps and cores: line-of-sight velocities and 2D spatial distributions of their stars are used as inputs to obtain a PDF representing the probability of predicting a specific inner slope. The model recovers accurately the expected DM profiles: $\sim 82{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the galaxies have a derived inner slope within ±0.1 of their true value, while $\sim 98{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ within ±0.3. We apply our model to four Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies and find results consistent with those obtained with the Jeans modelling based code GravSphere: the Fornax dSph has a strong indication of possessing a central DM core, Carina and Sextans have cusps (although the latter with large uncertainties), while Sculptor shows a double peaked PDF indicating that a cusp is preferred, but a core cannot be ruled out. Our results show that simulation-based inference with neural networks provide a innovative and complementary method for the determination of the inner matter density profiles in galaxies, which in turn can help constrain the properties of the elusive DM.
We present new evidence for eight early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the CALIFA Survey that show clear rotation around their major photometric axis (“prolate rotation”). These are LSBCF560-04, NGC 0647, ...NGC 0810, NGC 2484, NGC 4874, NGC 5216, NGC 6173, and NGC 6338. Including NGC 5485, a known case of an ETG with stellar prolate rotation, as well as UGC 10695, a further candidate for prolate rotation, we report ten CALIFA galaxies in total that show evidence for such a feature in their stellar kinematics. Prolate rotators correspond to ~9% of the volume-corrected sample of CALIFA ETGs, a fraction much higher than previously reported. We find that prolate rotation is more common (~27%) among the most massive ETGs (M∗ ≳ 2 × 1011M⊙). We investigated the implications of these findings by studying N-body merger simulations, and we show that a prolate ETG with rotation around its major axis could be the result of a major polar merger, with the amplitude of prolate rotation depending on the initial bulge-to-total stellar mass ratio of its progenitor galaxies. Additionally, we find that prolate ETGs resulting from this formation scenario show a correlation between their stellar line-of-sight velocity and higher order moment h3, opposite to typical oblate ETGs, as well as a double peak of their stellar velocity dispersion along their minor axis. Finally, we investigated the origin of prolate rotation in polar galaxy merger remnants. Our findings suggest that prolate rotation in massive ETGs might be more common than previously expected, and can help toward a better understanding of their dynamical structure and formation origin.
ABSTRACT
Supernovae feedback driven expansion has proven to be a viable mechanism to explain the average properties, such as size, colour, mass, and internal kinematics, of a large fraction of ...ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs). Here, we explore the origin of stellar metallicity gradients in feedback driven simulated UDGs from the NIHAO project and compare them with the observed distribution of metallicity gradients of both Local Group (LG) dwarfs as well as of the recently observed UDG DF44. Simulated UDGs display a large variety of metallicity profiles, showing flat to negative gradients, similarly to what is observed in LG dwarfs, while DF44 data suggest a flat to positive gradient. The variety of metallicity gradients in simulations is set by the interplay between the radius at which star formation occurs and the subsequent supernovae feedback driven stellar redistribution: rotation supported systems tend to have flat metallicity profiles while dispersion supported galaxies show negative and steep profiles. Our results suggest that UDGs are not peculiar in what regards their metallicity gradients, when compared to regular dwarfs. We predict that UDGs formed via SNae feedback should have flat-to-negative metallicity profiles: desirably, a larger observational sample of UDGs’ gradients shall be available in the future, in order to test our predictions.
PDF
