No Arabic abstract
We analyze 88 independent high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of disk galaxies in the NIHAO simulations suite to explore the connection between the atomic gas fraction and angular momentum of baryons throughout cosmic time. The study is motivated by the analytic model of citet{obreschkow16}, which predicts a relation between the atomic gas fraction $f_{rm atm}$ and the global atomic stability parameter $q equiv jsigma / (GM)$, where $M$ and $j$ are the mass and specific angular momentum of the galaxy (stars+cold gas) and $sigma$ is the velocity dispersion of the atomic gas. We show that the simulated galaxies follow this relation from their formation ($zsimeq4$) to present within $sim 0.5$ dex. To explain this behavior, we explore the evolution of the local Toomre stability and find that $90%$--$100%$ of the atomic gas in all simulated galaxies is stable at any time. In other words, throughout the entire epoch of peak star formation until today, the timescale for accretion is longer than the timescale to reach equilibrium, thus resulting in a quasi-static equilibrium of atomic gas at any time. Hence, the evolution of $f_{rm atm}$ depends on the complex hierarchical growth history primarily via the evolution of $q$. An exception are galaxies subject to strong environmental effects.
We study the dust evolution in galaxies by implementing a detailed dust prescription in the SAGE semi-analytical model for galaxy formation. The new model, called Dusty SAGE, follows the condensation of dust in the ejecta of type II supernovae and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, grain growth in the dense molecular clouds, destruction by supernovae shocks, and the removal of dust from the ISM by star formation, reheating, inflows and outflows. Our model successfully reproduces the observed dust mass function at redshift z = 0 and the observed scaling relations for dust across a wide range of redshifts. We find that the dust mass content in the present Universe is mainly produced via grain growth in the interstellar medium (ISM). By contrast, in the early Universe, the primary production mechanism for dust is the condensation in stellar ejecta. The shift of the significant production channel for dust characterises the scaling relations of dust-to-gas (DTG) and dust-to-metal (DTM) ratios. In galaxies where the grain growth dominates, we find positive correlations for DTG and DTM ratios with both metallicity and stellar mass. On the other hand, in galaxies where dust is produced primarily via condensation, we find negative or no correlation for DTM and DTG ratios with either metallicity or stellar mass. In agreement with observation showing that the circumgalactic medium (CGM) contains more dust than the ISM, our model also shows the same trend for z < 4. Our semi-analytic model is publicly available at https: //github.com/dptriani/dusty-sage.
Studies of nearby galaxies including the Milky Way have provided fundamental information on the evolution of structure in the Universe, the existence and nature of dark matter, the origin and evolution of galaxies, and the global features of star formation. Yet despite decades of work, many of the most basic aspects of galaxies and their environments remain a mystery. In this paper we describe some outstanding problems in this area and the ways in which large radio facilities will contribute to further progress.
Current galaxy observations suggest that a roughly linear correlation exists between the [CII] emission and the star formation rate, either as spatially-resolved or integrated quantities. Observationally, this correlation seems to be independent of metallicity, but the very large scatter does not allow to properly assess whether this is true. On the other hand, theoretical models tend to suggest a metallicity dependence of the correlation. In this study, we investigate the metallicity evolution of the correlation via a high-resolution zoom-in cosmological simulation of a dwarf galaxy employing state-of-the-art sub-grid modelling for gas cooling, star formation, and stellar feedback, and that self-consistently evolves the abundances of metal elements out of equilibrium. Our results suggest that the correlation should evolve with metallicity, in agreement with theoretical predictions, but also that this evolution can be hardly detected in observations, because of the large scatter. We also find that most of the [CII] emission is associated with neutral gas at low-intermediate densities, whereas the highest emissivity is produced by the densest regions around star-forming regions.
We study the evolution of the cold gas content of galaxies by splitting the interstellar medium into its atomic and molecular hydrogen components, using the galaxy formation model GALFORM in the LCDM framework. We calculate the molecular-to-atomic hydrogen mass ratio, H2/HI, in each galaxy using two different approaches; the pressure-based empirical relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky and the theoretical model of Krumholz, McKeee & Tumlinson, and apply them to consistently calculate the star formation rates of galaxies. We find that the model based on the Blitz & Rosolowsky law predicts an HI mass function, CO(1-0) luminosity function, correlations between the H2/HI ratio and stellar and cold gas mass, and infrared-CO luminosity relation in good agreement with local and high redshift observations. The HI mass function evolves weakly with redshift, with the number density of high mass galaxies decreasing with increasing redshift. In the case of the H2 mass function, the number density of massive galaxies increases strongly from z=0 to z=2, followed by weak evolution up to z=4. We also find that the H2/HI ratio of galaxies is strongly dependent on stellar and cold gas mass, and also on redshift. The slopes of the correlations between H2/HI and stellar and cold gas mass hardly evolve, but the normalisation increases by up to two orders of magnitude from z=0-8. The strong evolution in the H2 mass function and the H2/HI ratio is primarily due to the evolution in the sizes of galaxies and secondarily, in the gas fractions. The predicted cosmic density evolution of HI agrees with the observed evolution inferred from DLAs, and is dominated by low/intermediate mass halos. We find that previous theoretical studies have largely overestimated the redshift evolution of the global H2/HI ratio due to limited resolution. We predict a maximum of rho_H2/rho_HI~1.2 at z~3.5.
We present simulations of galaxy formation, based on the GADGET-3 code, in which a sub-resolution model for star formation and stellar feedback is interfaced with a new model for AGN feedback. Our sub-resolution model describes a multiphase ISM, accounting for hot and cold gas within the same resolution element: we exploit this feature to investigate the impact of coupling AGN feedback energy to the different phases of the ISM over cosmic time. Our fiducial model considers that AGN feedback energy coupling is driven by the covering factors of the hot and cold phases. We perform a suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of disc galaxies ($M_{rm halo, , DM} simeq 2 cdot 10^{12}$ M$_{odot}$, at $z=0$), to investigate: $(i)$ the effect of different ways of coupling AGN feedback energy to the multiphase ISM; $(ii)$ the impact of different prescriptions for gas accretion (i.e. only cold gas, both cold and hot gas, with the additional possibility of limiting gas accretion from cold gas with high angular momentum); $(iii)$ how different models of gas accretion and coupling of AGN feedback energy affect the coevolution of supermassive BHs and their host galaxy. We find that at least a share of the AGN feedback energy has to couple with the diffuse gas, in order to avoid an excessive growth of the BH mass. When the BH only accretes cold gas, it experiences a growth that is faster than in the case in which both cold and hot gas are accreted. If the accretion of cold gas with high angular momentum is reduced, the BH mass growth is delayed, the BH mass at $z=0$ is reduced by up to an order of magnitude, and the BH is prevented from accreting below $z lesssim 2$, when the galaxy disc forms.