The Difficulty of Getting High Escape Fractions of Ionizing Photons from High-redshift Galaxies: a View from the FIRE Cosmological Simulations

We present a series of high-resolution (20-2000 Msun, 0.1-4 pc) cosmological zoom-in simulations at z~6 from the Feedback In Realistic Environment (FIRE) project. These simulations cover halo masses 10^9-10^11 Msun and rest-frame ultraviolet magnitude Muv = -9 to -19. These simulations include explicit models of the multi-phase ISM, star formation, and stellar feedback, which produce reasonable galaxy properties at z = 0-6. We post-process the snapshots with a radiative transfer code to evaluate the escape fraction (fesc) of hydrogen ionizing photons. We find that the instantaneous fesc has large time variability (0.01%-20%), while the time-averaged fesc over long time-scales generally remains ~5%, considerably lower than the estimate in many reionization models. We find no strong dependence of fesc on galaxy mass or redshift. In our simulations, the intrinsic ionizing photon budgets are dominated by stellar populations younger than 3 Myr, which tend to be buried in dense birth clouds. The escaping photons mostly come from populations between 3-10 Myr, whose birth clouds have been largely cleared by stellar feedback. However, these populations only contribute a small fraction of intrinsic ionizing photon budgets according to standard stellar population models. We show that fesc can be boosted to high values, if stellar populations older than 3 Myr produce more ionizing photons than standard stellar population models (as motivated by, e.g., models including binaries). By contrast, runaway stars with velocities suggested by observations can enhance fesc by only a small fraction. We show that "sub-grid" star formation models, which do not explicitly resolve star formation in dense clouds with n >> 1 cm^-3, will dramatically over-predict fesc.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, MNRAS in pres

The Origin and Evolution of the Galaxy Mass-Metallicity Relation

We use high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environment (FIRE) project to study the galaxy mass-metallicity relations (MZR) from z=0-6. These simulations include explicit models of the multi-phase ISM, star formation, and stellar feedback. The simulations cover halo masses Mhalo=10^9-10^13 Msun and stellar mass Mstar=10^4-10^11 Msun at z=0 and have been shown to produce many observed galaxy properties from z=0-6. For the first time, our simulations agree reasonably well with the observed mass-metallicity relations at z=0-3 for a broad range of galaxy masses. We predict the evolution of the MZR from z=0-6 as log(Zgas/Zsun)=12+log(O/H)-9.0=0.35[log(Mstar/Msun)-10]+0.93 exp(-0.43 z)-1.05 and log(Zstar/Zsun)=[Fe/H]-0.2=0.40[log(Mstar/Msun)-10]+0.67 exp(-0.50 z)-1.04, for gas-phase and stellar metallicity, respectively. Our simulations suggest that the evolution of MZR is associated with the evolution of stellar/gas mass fractions at different redshifts, indicating the existence of a universal metallicity relation between stellar mass, gas mass, and metallicities. In our simulations, galaxies above Mstar=10^6 Msun are able to retain a large fraction of their metals inside the halo, because metal-rich winds fail to escape completely and are recycled into the galaxy. This resolves a long-standing discrepancy between "sub-grid" wind models (and semi-analytic models) and observations, where common sub-grid models cannot simultaneously reproduce the MZR and the stellar mass functions.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, re-submitted to MNRAS after revisions on referee comment

Feedback first: the surprisingly weak effects of magnetic fields, viscosity, conduction, and metal diffusion on galaxy formation

Using high-resolution simulations with explicit treatment of stellar feedback physics based on the FIRE (Feedback in Realistic Environments) project, we study how galaxy formation and the interstellar medium (ISM) are affected by magnetic fields, anisotropic Spitzer-Braginskii conduction and viscosity, and sub-grid metal diffusion from unresolved turbulence. We consider controlled simulations of isolated (non-cosmological) galaxies but also a limited set of cosmological "zoom-in" simulations. Although simulations have shown significant effects from these physics with weak or absent stellar feedback, the effects are much weaker than those of stellar feedback when the latter is modeled explicitly. The additional physics have no systematic effect on galactic star formation rates (SFRs) . In contrast, removing stellar feedback leads to SFRs being over-predicted by factors of $\sim 10 -100$. Without feedback, neither galactic winds nor volume filling hot-phase gas exist, and discs tend to runaway collapse to ultra-thin scale-heights with unphysically dense clumps congregating at the galactic center. With stellar feedback, a multi-phase, turbulent medium with galactic fountains and winds is established. At currently achievable resolutions and for the investigated halo mass range $10^{10}-10^{13} M_{\odot}$, the additional physics investigated here (MHD, conduction, viscosity, metal diffusion) have only weak ($\sim10\%$-level) effects on regulating SFR and altering the balance of phases, outflows, or the energy in ISM turbulence, consistent with simple equipartition arguments. We conclude that galactic star formation and the ISM are primarily governed by a combination of turbulence, gravitational instabilities, and feedback. We add the caveat that AGN feedback is not included in the present work

Modelling chemical abundance distributions for dwarf galaxies in the Local Group: the impact of turbulent metal diffusion

We investigate stellar metallicity distribution functions (MDFs), including Fe and ${\alpha}$-element abundances, in dwarf galaxies from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. We examine both isolated dwarf galaxies and those that are satellites of a Milky Way-mass galaxy. In particular, we study the effects of including a sub-grid turbulent model for the diffusion of metals in gas. Simulations that include diffusion have narrower MDFs and abundance ratio distributions, because diffusion drives individual gas and star particles toward the average metallicity. This effect provides significantly better agreement with observed abundance distributions of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group, including the small intrinsic scatter in [${\alpha}$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] (less than 0.1 dex). This small intrinsic scatter arises in our simulations because the interstellar medium (ISM) in dwarf galaxies is well-mixed at nearly all cosmic times, such that stars that form at a given time have similar abundances to within 0.1 dex. Thus, most of the scatter in abundances at z = 0 arises from redshift evolution and not from instantaneous scatter in the ISM. We find similar MDF widths and intrinsic scatter for satellite and isolated dwarf galaxies, which suggests that environmental effects play a minor role compared with internal chemical evolution in our simulations. Overall, with the inclusion of metal diffusion, our simulations reproduce abundance distribution widths of observed low-mass galaxies, enabling detailed studies of chemical evolution in galaxy formation.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, published in MNRA

Reconciling observed and simulated stellar halo masses

We use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky-Way-mass galaxies from the FIRE project to evaluate various strategies for estimating the mass of a galaxy's stellar halo from deep, integrated-light images. We find good agreement with integrated-light observations if we mimic observational methods to measure the mass of the stellar halo by selecting regions of an image via projected radius relative to the disk scale length or by their surface density in stellar mass . However, these observational methods systematically underestimate the accreted stellar component, defined in our (and most) simulations as the mass of stars formed outside of the host galaxy, by up to a factor of ten, since the accreted component is centrally concentrated and therefore substantially obscured by the galactic disk. Furthermore, these observational methods introduce spurious dependencies of the estimated accreted stellar component on the stellar mass and size of galaxies that can obscure the trends in accreted stellar mass predicted by cosmological simulations, since we find that in our simulations the size and shape of the central galaxy is not strongly correlated with the assembly history of the accreted stellar halo. This effect persists whether galaxies are viewed edge-on or face-on. We show that metallicity or color information may provide a way to more cleanly delineate in observations the regions dominated by accreted stars. Absent additional data, we caution that estimates of the mass of the accreted stellar component from single-band images alone should be taken as lower limits.Comment: Version accepted by Ap

On the dust temperatures of high redshift galaxies

Dust temperature is an important property of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. It is required when converting (sub)millimeter broadband flux to total infrared luminosity (L_IR), and hence star formation rate, in high-z galaxies. However, different definitions of dust temperatures have been used in the literature, leading to different physical interpretations of how ISM conditions change with, e.g., redshift and star formation rate. In this paper, we analyse the dust temperatures of massive (M* > 10^10 Msun) z=2-6 galaxies with the help of high-resolution cosmological simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. At z~2, our simulations successfully predict dust temperatures in good agreement with observations. We find that dust temperatures based on the peak emission wavelength increase with redshift, in line with the higher star formation activity at higher redshift, and are strongly correlated with the specific star formation rate. In contrast, the mass-weighted dust temperature does not strongly evolve with redshift over z=2-6 at fixed IR luminosity but is tightly correlated with L_IR at fixed z. The mass-weighted temperature is important for accurately estimating the total dust mass. We also analyse an 'equivalent' dust temperature for converting (sub)millimeter flux density to total IR luminosity, and provide a fitting formula as a function of redshift and dust-to-metal ratio. We find that galaxies of higher equivalent (or higher peak) dust temperature ('warmer dust') do not necessarily have higher mass-weighted temperatures. A 'two-phase' picture for interstellar dust can explain the different scaling relations of the various dust temperatures.Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The failure of stellar feedback, magnetic fields, conduction, and morphological quenching in maintaining red galaxies

The quenching "maintenance'" and related "cooling flow" problems are important in galaxies from Milky Way mass through clusters. We investigate this in halos with masses $\sim 10^{12}-10^{14}\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$, using non-cosmological high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations with the FIRE-2 (Feedback In Realistic Environments) stellar feedback model. We specifically focus on physics present without AGN, and show that various proposed "non-AGN" solution mechanisms in the literature, including Type Ia supernovae, shocked AGB winds, other forms of stellar feedback (e.g. cosmic rays), magnetic fields, Spitzer-Braginskii conduction, or "morphological quenching" do not halt or substantially reduce cooling flows nor maintain "quenched" galaxies in this mass range. We show that stellar feedback (including cosmic rays from SNe) alters the balance of cold/warm gas and the rate at which the cooled gas within the galaxy turns into stars, but not the net baryonic inflow. If anything, outflowing metals and dense gas promote additional cooling. Conduction is important only in the most massive halos, as expected, but even at $\sim 10^{14}\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$ reduces inflow only by a factor $\sim 2$ (owing to saturation effects and anisotropic suppression). Changing the morphology of the galaxies only slightly alters their Toomre-$Q$ parameter, and has no effect on cooling (as expected), so has essentially no effect on cooling flows or maintaining quenching. This all supports the idea that additional physics, e.g., AGN feedback, must be important in massive galaxies.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Simulating galaxies in the reionization era with FIRE-2: morphologies and sizes

We study the morphologies and sizes of galaxies at z>5 using high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations from the Feedback In Realistic Environments project. The galaxies show a variety of morphologies, from compact to clumpy to irregular. The simulated galaxies have more extended morphologies and larger sizes when measured using rest-frame optical B-band light than rest-frame UV light; sizes measured from stellar mass surface density are even larger. The UV morphologies are usually dominated by several small, bright young stellar clumps that are not always associated with significant stellar mass. The B-band light traces stellar mass better than the UV, but it can also be biased by the bright clumps. At all redshifts, galaxy size correlates with stellar mass/luminosity with large scatter. The half-light radii range from 0.01 to 0.2 arcsec (0.05-1 kpc physical) at fixed magnitude. At z>5, the size of galaxies at fixed stellar mass/luminosity evolves as (1+z)^{-m}, with m~1-2. For galaxies less massive than M_star~10^8 M_sun, the ratio of the half-mass radius to the halo virial radius is ~10% and does not evolve significantly at z=5-10; this ratio is typically 1-5% for more massive galaxies. A galaxy's "observed" size decreases dramatically at shallower surface brightness limits. This effect may account for the extremely small sizes of z>5 galaxies measured in the Hubble Frontier Fields. We provide predictions for the cumulative light distribution as a function of surface brightness for typical galaxies at z=6.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, resubmitted to MNRAS after revision for referee's comment