1,658 research outputs found
The Maximum Flux of Star-Forming Galaxies
The importance of radiation pressure feedback in galaxy formation has been
extensively debated over the last decade. The regime of greatest uncertainty is
in the most actively star-forming galaxies, where large dust columns can
potentially produce a dust-reprocessed infrared radiation field with enough
pressure to drive turbulence or eject material. Here we derive the conditions
under which a self-gravitating, mixed gas-star disc can remain hydrostatic
despite trapped radiation pressure. Consistently taking into account the
self-gravity of the medium, the star- and dust-to-gas ratios, and the effects
of turbulent motions not driven by radiation, we show that galaxies can achieve
a maximum Eddington-limited star formation rate per unit area
pc Myr,
corresponding to a critical flux of
kpc similar to previous estimates; higher fluxes eject mass in bulk,
halting further star formation. Conversely, we show that in galaxies below this
limit, our one-dimensional models imply simple vertical hydrostatic equilibrium
and that radiation pressure is ineffective at driving turbulence or ejecting
matter. Because the vast majority of star-forming galaxies lie below the
maximum limit for typical dust-to-gas ratios, we conclude that infrared
radiation pressure is likely unimportant for all but the most extreme systems
on galaxy-wide scales. Thus, while radiation pressure does not explain the
Kennicutt-Schmidt relation, it does impose an upper truncation on it. Our
predicted truncation is in good agreement with the highest observed gas and
star formation rate surface densities found both locally and at high redshift.Comment: Version accepted for publication in MNRAS. 12 pages, 8 figures. New
appendix on photon tirin
Collapse, outflows and fragmentation of massive, turbulent and magnetized prestellar barotropic cores
Stars and more particularly massive stars, have a drastic impact on galaxy
evolution. Yet the conditions in which they form and collapse are still not
fully understood. In particular, the influence of the magnetic field on the
collapse of massive clumps is relatively unexplored, it is thus of great
relevance in the context of the formation of massive stars to investigate its
impact. We perform high resolution, MHD simulations of the collapse of hundred
solar masses, turbulent and magnetized clouds, using the adaptive mesh
refinement code RAMSES. We compute various quantities such as mass
distribution, magnetic field and angular momentum within the collapsing core
and study the episodic outflows and the fragmentation that occurs during the
collapse. The magnetic field has a drastic impact on the cloud evolution. We
find that magnetic braking is able to substantially reduce the angular momentum
in the inner part of the collapsing cloud. Fast and episodic outflows are being
launched with typical velocities of the order of 3-5 km s although the
highest velocities can be as high as 30-40 km s. The fragmentation in
several objects, is reduced in substantially magnetized clouds with respect to
hydrodynamical ones by a factor of the order of 1.5-2. We conclude that
magnetic fields have a significant impact on the evolution of massive clumps.
In combination with radiation, magnetic fields largely determine the outcome of
massive core collapse. We stress that numerical convergence of MHD collapse is
a challenging issue. In particular, numerical diffusion appears to be important
at high density therefore possibly leading to an over-estimation of the number
of fragments.Comment: accepted for publication in A&
A fundamental test for stellar feedback recipes in galaxy simulations
Direct comparisons between galaxy simulations and observations that both
reach scales < 100 pc are strong tools to investigate the cloud-scale physics
of star formation and feedback in nearby galaxies. Here we carry out such a
comparison for hydrodynamical simulations of a Milky Way-like galaxy, including
stochastic star formation, HII region and supernova feedback, and chemical
post-processing at 8 pc resolution. Our simulation shows excellent agreement
with almost all kpc-scale and larger observables, including total star
formation rates, radial profiles of CO, HI, and star formation through the
galactic disc, mass ratios of the ISM components, both whole-galaxy and
resolved Kennicutt-Schmidt relations, and giant molecular cloud properties.
However, we find that our simulation does not reproduce the observed
de-correlation between tracers of gas and star formation on < 100 pc scales,
known as the star formation 'uncertainty principle', which indicates that
observed clouds undergo rapid evolutionary lifecycles. We conclude that the
discrepancy is driven by insufficiently-strong pre-supernova feedback in our
simulation, which does not disperse the surrounding gas completely, leaving
star formation tracer emission too strongly associated with molecular gas
tracer emission, inconsistent with observations. This result implies that the
cloud-scale de-correlation of gas and star formation is a fundamental test for
feedback prescriptions in galaxy simulations, one that can fail even in
simulations that reproduce all other macroscopic properties of star-forming
galaxies.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
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