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Abstract We use a sample of 73 simulated satellite and central dwarf galaxies spanning a stellar mass range of 10^5.3–10^9.1M_⊙to investigate the origin of their stellar age gradients. We find that dwarf galaxies often form their stars “inside-out,” i.e., the stars form at successively larger radii over time. However, the oldest stars get reshuffled beyond the star-forming radius by fluctuations in the gravitational potential well caused by stellar feedback (the same mechanisms that cause dwarfs to form dark matter cores). The result is that many dwarfs appear to have an “outside-in” age gradient atz= 0, with younger stellar populations more centrally concentrated. However, for the reshuffled galaxies with the most extended star formation, young stars can form out to the large radii to which the old stars have been reshuffled, erasing the age gradient. We find that major mergers do not play a significant role in setting the age gradients of dwarfs. We find similar age gradient trends in satellites and field dwarfs, suggesting that environment plays only a minor role, if any. Finally, we find that the age gradient trends are imprinted on the galaxies at later times, suggesting that the stellar reshuffling dominates after the galaxies have formed 50% of their stellar mass. The later reshuffling is at odds with results from thefire-2simulations. Hence, age gradients offer a test of current star formation and feedback models that can be probed via observations of resolved stellar populations. 

Abstract Due to their inability to self-regulate, ultrafaint dwarfs are sensitive to prescriptions in subgrid physics models that converge and regulate at higher masses. We use high-resolution cosmological simulations to compare the effect of bursty star formation histories (SFHs) on dwarf galaxy structure for two different subgrid supernova (SN) feedback models, superbubble and blastwave, in dwarf galaxies with stellar masses from 5000 <M_*/M_⊙< 10⁹. We find that in the “MARVEL-ous Dwarfs” suite both feedback models produce cored galaxies and reproduce observed scaling relations for luminosity, mass, and size. Our sample accurately predicts the average stellar metallicity at higher masses, however low-mass dwarfs are metal poor relative to observed galaxies in the Local Group. We show that continuous bursty star formation and the resulting stellar feedback are able to create dark matter (DM) cores in the higher dwarf galaxy mass regime, while the majority of ultrafaint and classical dwarfs retain cuspy central DM density profiles. We find that the effective core formation peaks atM_*/M_halo≃ 5 × 10⁻³for both feedback models. Both subgrid SN models yield bursty SFHs at higher masses; however, galaxies simulated with superbubble feedback reach maximum mean burstiness values at lower stellar mass fractions relative to blastwave feedback. As a result, core formation may be better predicted by stellar mass fraction than the burstiness of SFHs.