ABSTRACT We study a suite of extremely high-resolution cosmological Feedback in Realistic Environments simulations of dwarf galaxies ($$M_{\rm halo} \lesssim 10^{10}\rm \, M_{\odot }$$), run to z = 0 with $$30\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$ resolution, sufficient (for the first time) to resolve the internal structure of individual supernovae remnants within the cooling radius. Every halo with $$M_{\rm halo} \gtrsim 10^{8.6}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$ is populated by a resolved stellar galaxy, suggesting very low-mass dwarfs may be ubiquitous in the field. Our ultra-faint dwarfs (UFDs; $$M_{\ast }\lt 10^{5}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$) have their star formation (SF) truncated early (z ≳ 2), likely by reionization, while classical dwarfs ($$M_{\ast }\gt 10^{5}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$) continue forming stars to z < 0.5. The systems have bursty star formation histories, forming most of their stars in periods of elevated SF strongly clustered in both space and time. This allows our dwarf with M*/Mhalo > 10−4 to form a dark matter core $${\gt}200\rm \, pc$$, while lower mass UFDs exhibit cusps down to $${\lesssim}100\rm \, pc$$, as expected from energetic arguments. Our dwarfs with $$M_{\ast }\gt 10^{4}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$$ have half-mass radii (R1/2) in agreement with Local Group (LG) dwarfs (dynamical mass versus R1/2 and stellar rotation also resemble observations). The lowest mass UFDs are below surface brightness limits of current surveys but are potentially visible in next-generation surveys (e.g. LSST). The stellar metallicities are lower than in LG dwarfs; this may reflect pre-enrichment of the LG by the massive hosts or Pop-III stars. Consistency with lower resolution studies implies that our simulations are numerically robust (for a given physical model).
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Efficient early stellar feedback can suppress galactic outflows by reducing supernova clustering
ABSTRACT We present a novel set of stellar feedback models, implemented in the moving-mesh code arepo, designed for galaxy formation simulations with near-parsec (or better) resolution. These include explicit sampling of stars from the IMF, allowing feedback to be linked to individual massive stars, an improved method for the modelling of H ii regions, photoelectric (PE) heating from a spatially varying FUV field and supernova feedback. We perform a suite of 32 simulations of isolated $$M_\mathrm{vir} = 10^{10}\, \mathrm{M_\odot }$$ galaxies with a baryonic mass resolution of $$20\, \mathrm{M_\odot }$$ in order to study the non-linear coupling of the different feedback channels. We find that photoionization (PI) and supernova feedback are both independently capable of regulating star formation to the same level, while PE heating is inefficient. PI produces a considerably smoother star formation history than supernovae. When all feedback channels are combined, the additional suppression of star formation rates is minor. However, outflow rates are substantially reduced relative to the supernova only simulations. We show that this is directly caused by a suppression of supernova clustering by the PI feedback, disrupting star-forming clouds prior to the first supernovae. We demonstrate that our results are robust to variations of our star formation prescription, feedback models and the baryon fraction of the galaxy. Our results also imply that the burstiness of star formation and the mass loading of outflows may be overestimated if the adopted star particle mass is considerably larger than the mass of individual stars because this imposes a minimum cluster size.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1835509
- PAR ID:
- 10355199
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 506
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3882 to 3915
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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