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Register a new userChemo-spectrophotometric evolution of spiral galaxies: II. Main properties of present day disk galaxies
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We study the chemical and spectro-photometric evolution of galactic disks with detailed models calibrated on the Milky Way and using simple scaling relations, based on currently popular semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We compare our results to a large body of observational data on present day galactic disks, including: disk sizes and central surface brightness, Tully-Fisher relations in various wavelength bands, colour-colour and colour-magnitude relations, gas fractions vs. magnitudes and colours, abundances vs. local and integrated properties, as well as spectra for different galactic rotational velocities. Despite the extremely simple nature of our models, we find satisfactory agreement with all those observables, provided the timescale for star formation in low mass disks is longer than for more massive ones. This assumption is apparently in contradiction with the standard picture of hierarchical cosmology. We find, however, that it is extremely successfull in reproducing major features of present day disks, like the change in the slope of the Tully-Fisher relation with wavelength, the fact that more massive galaxies are on average ``redder than low mass ones (a generic problem of standard hierarchical models) and the metallicity-luminosity relation for spirals. It is concluded that, on a purely empirical basis, this new picture at least as successful as the standard one. Observations at high redshifts could help to distinguish between the two possibilities.
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We explore the implications for the high redshift universe of ``state-of-the-art models for the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of spiral galaxies. The models are based on simple ``scaling relations for discs, obtained in the framework of Cold Dark Matter models for galaxy formation, and were ``calibrated as to reproduce the properties of the Milky Way and of nearby discs (at redshift z~0). In this paper, we compare the predictions of our ``hybrid approach to galaxy evolution to observations at moderate and high redshift. We find that the models are in fairly good agreement with observations up to z~1, while some problems appear at higher redshift (provided there is no selection bias in the data); these discrepancies may suggest that galaxy mergers (not considered in this work) played a non negligible role at z>1. We also predict the existence of a ``universal correlation between abundance gradients and disc scalelengths, independent of redshift.
We study the star formation history of normal spirals by using a large and homogeneous data sample of local galaxies. For our analysis we utilise detailed models of chemical and spectrophotometric galactic evolution, calibrated on the Milky Way disc. We find that star formation efficiency is independent of galactic mass, while massive discs have, on average, lower gas fractions and are redder than their low mass counterparts; put together, these findings convincingly suggest that massive spirals are older than low mass ones. We evaluate the effective ages of the galaxies of our sample and we find that massive spirals must be several Gyr older than low mass ones. We also show that these galaxies (having rotational velocities in the 80-400 km/s range) cannot have suffered extensive mass losses, i.e. they cannot have lost during their lifetime an amount of mass much larger than their current content of gas+stars.
Although there are many more stellar population studies of elliptical and lenticular galaxies, studies of spiral galaxies are catching up, due to higher signal to noise data on one hand, and better analysis methods on the other. Here I start by discussing some modern methods of analyzing integrated spectra of spiral galaxies, and comparing them with traditional methods. I then discuss some recent developments in our understanding of the stellar content of spiral galaxies, and their associated dust content. I discuss star formation histories, radial stellar population gradients, and stellar populations in sigma drops.
The problem of chemo-photometric evolution of late-type galaxies is dealt with relying on prime physical arguments of energetic self-consistency between chemical enhancement of galaxy mass, through nuclear processing inside stars, and luminosity evolution of the system. Chemical enhancement is assessed in terms of the so-called yield metallicity, that is the metal abundance of processed mass inside stars, as constrained by the galaxy photometric history.
Todays galaxies experienced cosmic reionization at different times in different locations. For the first time, reionization ($50%$ ionized) redshifts, $z_R$, at the location of their progenitors are derived from new, fully-coupled radiation-hydrodynamics simulation of galaxy formation and reionization at $z > 6$, matched to N-body simulation to z = 0. Constrained initial conditions were chosen to form the well-known structures of the local universe, including the Local Group and Virgo, in a (91 Mpc)$^3$ volume large enough to model both global and local reionization. Reionization simulation CoDa I-AMR, by CPU-GPU code EMMA, used (2048)$^3$ particles and (2048)$^3$ initial cells, adaptively-refined, while N-body simulation CoDa I-DM2048, by Gadget2, used (2048)$^3$ particles, to find reionization times for all galaxies at z = 0 with masses $M(z=0)ge 10^8 M_odot$. Galaxies with $M(z=0) gtrsim 10^{11} M_odot$ reionized earlier than the universe as a whole, by up to $sim$ 500 Myrs, with significant scatter. For Milky-Way-like galaxies, $z_R$ ranged from 8 to 15. Galaxies with $M(z=0) lesssim 10^{11} M_odot$ typically reionized as late or later than globally-averaged $50%$ reionization at $langle z_Rrangle =7.8$, in neighborhoods where reionization was completed by external radiation. The spread of reionization times within galaxies was sometimes as large as the galaxy-to-galaxy scatter. The Milky Way and M31 reionized earlier than global reionization but later than typical for their mass, neither dominated by external radiation. Their most massive progenitors at $z>6$ had $z_R$ = 9.8 (MW) and 11 (M31), while their total masses had $z_R$ = 8.2 (both).
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