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Title: Supernova-driven Turbulent Metal Mixing in High-redshift Galactic Disks: Metallicity Fluctuations in the Interstellar Medium and its Imprints on Metal-poor Stars in the Milky Way
Abstract

The extent to which turbulence mixes gas in the face of recurrent infusions of fresh metals by supernovae (SN) could help provide important constraints on the local star formation conditions. This includes predictions of the metallicity dispersion among metal-poor stars, which suggests that the interstellar medium was not very well mixed at these early times. The purpose of thisLetteris to help isolate, via a series of numerical experiments, some of the key processes that regulate turbulent mixing of SN elements in galactic disks. We study the gas interactions in small simulated patches of a galaxy disk with the goal of resolving the small-scale mixing effects of metals at parsec scales, which enables us to measure the turbulent diffusion coefficient in various galaxy environments. By investigating the statistics of variations ofαelements in these simulations, we are able to derive constraints not only on the allowed range of intrinsic yield variations in SN explosions but also on the star formation history of the Milky Way. We argue that the observed dispersion of [Mg/Fe] in metal-poor halo stars is compatible with the star-forming conditions expected in dwarf satellites or in an early low-star-forming Milky Way progenitor. In particular, metal variations in stars more » that have not been phase-mixed can be used to infer the star-forming conditions of disrupted dwarf satellites.

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Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ;
Award ID(s):
1911206
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10371573
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Volume:
936
Issue:
2
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
Article No. L26
ISSN:
2041-8205
Publisher:
DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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