scholarly journals Phylogeny of the Milky Way’s inner disk and bulge populations: Implications for gas accretion, (the lack of) inside-out thick disk formation, and quenching

2018 ◽  
Vol 618 ◽  
pp. A78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misha Haywood ◽  
Paola Di Matteo ◽  
Matthew Lehnert ◽  
Owain Snaith ◽  
Francesca Fragkoudi ◽  
...  

We show that the bulge and the disk of the Milky Way (MW) at R ≲ 7 kpc are well described by a unique chemical evolution and a two-phase star formation history (SFH). We argue that the populations within this inner disk, not the entire disk, are the same, and that the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) of the bar plays a key role in explaining this uniformity. In our model of a two-phase SFH, the metallicity, [α/Fe] and [α/H] distributions, and age-metallicity relation are all compatible with the observations of both the inner disk and bulge. The dip at [Fe/H] ∼ 0 dex seen in the metallicity distributions of the bulge and inner disk reflects the quenching episode in the SFH of the inner MW at age ∼8 Gyr, and the common evolution of the bulge and inner disk stars. Our results for the inner region of the MW, R ≲ 7 kpc, are consistent with a rapid build-up of a large fraction of its total baryonic mass within a few billion years. We show that at z ≤ 1.5, when the MW was starting to quench, transitioning between the end of the α-enhanced thick disk formation to the start of the thin disk, and yet was still gas rich, the gas accretion rate could not have been significant. The [α/Fe] abundance ratio before and after this quenching phase would be different, which is not observed. The decrease in the accretion rate and gas fraction at z ≤ 2 was necessary to stabilize the disk allowing the transition from thick to thin disks, and for beginning the secular phase of the MW’s evolution. This possibly permitted a stellar bar to develop which we hypothesize is responsible for quenching the star formation. The present analysis suggests that MW history, and in particular at the transition from the thick to the thin disk – the epoch of the quenching – must have been driven by a decrease of the star formation efficiency. We argue that the decline in the intensity of gas accretion, the formation of the bar, and the quenching of the star formation rate (SFR) at the same epoch may be causally connected thus explaining their temporal coincidence. Assuming that about 20% of the gas reservoir in which metals are diluted is molecular, we show that our model is well positioned on the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation at all times.

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiko Ibukiyama

AbstractWe derive age–metallicity relations (AMRs) and orbits for the 1658 solar neighbourhood stars for which accurate distances are measured by the Hipparcos satellite. The sample comprises 1382 thin disk stars, 229 thick disk stars, and 47 halo stars according to their orbital parameters. We find a considerable scatter for thin disk AMRs along the one-zone Galactic chemical evolution (GCE) model. Orbits and metallicities of thin disk stars show no clear relation to each other. The scatter along the AMR exists even if stars with the same orbits are selected. We examine simple extensions of one-zone GCE models which account for inhomogeneity in the effective yield and inhomogeneous star formation rate in the Galaxy. Both extensions of the one-zone GCE model cannot account for the scatter in the age–[Fe/H]–[Ca/Fe] relation simultaneously. We conclude, therefore, that the scatter along the thin disk AMR is an essential feature in the formation and evolution of the Galaxy. The AMR for thick disk stars shows that star formation terminated 8 Gyr ago in the thick disk. As previously reported, thick disk stars are more Ca-rich than thin disk stars with the same [Fe/H]. We find that thick disk stars show a vertical abundance gradient. These three facts — AMR, vertical gradient, and [Ca/Fe]–[Fe/H] relation — support monolithic collapse and/or accretion of satellite dwarf galaxies as likely thick disk formation scenarios.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S268) ◽  
pp. 483-488
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Smiljanic ◽  
L. Pasquini ◽  
P. Bonifacio ◽  
D. Galli ◽  
B. Barbuy ◽  
...  

AbstractThe single stable isotope of beryllium is a pure product of cosmic-ray spallation in the ISM. Assuming that the cosmic-rays are globally transported across the Galaxy, the beryllium production should be a widespread process and its abundance should be roughly homogeneous in the early-Galaxy at a given time. Thus, it could be useful as a tracer of time. In an investigation of the use of Be as a cosmochronometer and of its evolution in the Galaxy, we found evidence that in a log(Be/H) vs. [α/Fe] diagram the halo stars separate into two components. One is consistent with predictions of evolutionary models while the other is chemically indistinguishable from the thick-disk stars. This is interpreted as a difference in the star formation history of the two components and suggests that the local halo is not a single uniform population where a clear age-metallicity relation can be defined. We also found evidence that the star formation rate was lower in the outer regions of the thick disk, pointing towards an inside-out formation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 490 (3) ◽  
pp. 4401-4418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Armillotta ◽  
Mark R Krumholz ◽  
Enrico M Di Teodoro ◽  
N M McClure-Griffiths

ABSTRACT We present a study of the gas cycle and star formation history in the central 500 pc of the Milky Way, known as Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). Through hydrodynamical simulations of the inner 4.5 kpc of our Galaxy, we follow the gas cycle in a completely self-consistent way, starting from gas radial inflow due to the Galactic bar, the channelling of this gas into a dense, star-forming ring/stream at ≈200–300 pc from the Galactic centre, and the launching of galactic outflows powered by stellar feedback. We find that star formation activity in the CMZ goes through oscillatory burst/quench cycles, with a period of tens to hundreds of Myr, characterized by roughly constant gas mass but order-of-magnitude level variations in the star formation rate. Comparison with the observed present-day star formation rate of the CMZ suggests that we are currently near a minimum of this cycle. Stellar feedback drives a mainly two-phase wind off the Galactic disc. The warm phase dominates the mass flux, and carries $100\!-\!200{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the gas mass converted into stars. However, most of this gas goes into a fountain and falls back on to the disc rather than escaping the Galaxy. The hot phase carries most of the energy, with a time-averaged energy outflow rate of $10\!-\!20{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the supernova energy budget.


Science ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 341 (6141) ◽  
pp. 50-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Bouché ◽  
M. T. Murphy ◽  
G. G. Kacprzak ◽  
C. Péroux ◽  
T. Contini ◽  
...  

Galaxies are thought to be fed by the continuous accretion of intergalactic gas, but direct observational evidence has been elusive. The accreted gas is expected to orbit about the galaxy’s halo, delivering not just fuel for star formation but also angular momentum to the galaxy, leading to distinct kinematic signatures. We report observations showing these distinct signatures near a typical distant star-forming galaxy, where the gas is detected using a background quasar passing 26 kiloparsecs from the host. Our observations indicate that gas accretion plays a major role in galaxy growth because the estimated accretion rate is comparable to the star-formation rate.


2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (3) ◽  
pp. 3240-3253
Author(s):  
Amanda R Lopes ◽  
Eduardo Telles ◽  
Jorge Melnick

ABSTRACT We discuss the implications of assuming different star formation histories (SFH) in the relation between star formation rate (SFR) and mass derived by the spectral energy distribution fitting (SED). Our analysis focuses on a sample of H ii galaxies, dwarf starburst galaxies spectroscopically selected through their strong narrow emission lines in SDSS DR13 at z < 0.4, cross-matched with photometric catalogues from GALEX, SDSS, UKIDSS, and WISE. We modelled and fitted the SEDs with the code CIGALE adopting different descriptions of SFH. By adding information from different independent studies, we find that H ii galaxies are best described by episodic SFHs including an old (10 Gyr), an intermediate age (100−1000 Myr) and a recent population with ages < 10 Myr. H ii galaxies agree with the SFR−M* relation from local star-forming galaxies, and only lie above such relation when the current SFR is adopted as opposed to the average over the entire SFH. The SFR−M* demonstrated not to be a good tool to provide additional information about the SFH of H ii galaxies, as different SFH present a similar behaviour with a spread of <0.1 dex.


2019 ◽  
Vol 624 ◽  
pp. A81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison W. S. Man ◽  
Matthew D. Lehnert ◽  
Joël D. R. Vernet ◽  
Carlos De Breuck ◽  
Theresa Falkendal

The objective of this work is to study how active galactic nuclei (AGN) influence star formation in host galaxies. We present a detailed investigation of the star-formation history and conditions of a z = 2.57 massive radio galaxy based on VLT/X-shooter and ALMA observations. The deep rest-frame ultraviolet spectrum contains photospheric absorption lines and wind features indicating the presence of OB-type stars. The most significantly detected photospheric features are used to characterize the recent star formation: neither instantaneous nor continuous star-formation history is consistent with the relative strength of the Si IIλ1485 and S Vλ1502 absorption. Rather, at least two bursts of star formation took place in the recent past, at 6+1-2 Myr and ≳20 Myr ago, respectively. We deduce a molecular H2 gas mass of (3.9 ± 1.0) × 1010 M⊙ based on ALMA observations of the [C I] 3P2−3P1 emission. The molecular gas mass is only 13% of its stellar mass. Combined with its high star-formation rate of (1020-170+190 M⊙ yr-1, this implies a high star-formation efficiency of (26 ± 8) Gyr−1 and a short depletion time of (38 ± 12) Myr. We attribute the efficient star formation to compressive gas motions in order to explain the modest velocity dispersions (⩽55 km s−1) of the photospheric lines and of the star-forming gas traced by [C I]. Because of the likely very young age of the radio source, our findings suggest that vigorous star formation consumes much of the gas and works in concert with the AGN to remove any residual molecular gas, and eventually quenching star formation in massive galaxies.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S262) ◽  
pp. 257-260
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Hayward ◽  
Patrik Jonsson ◽  
Kai Noeske ◽  
Stijn Wuyts ◽  
T. J. Cox ◽  
...  

AbstractWe discuss our ongoing project analyzing N-body/smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations of isolated and merging galaxies, performed using GADGET-2 (Springel 2005), with the 3-D adaptive grid, polychromatic Monte Carlo radiative transfer code SUNRISE (Jonsson 2006). We apply commonly used UV, optical, and IR star formation rate (SFR) indicators to the integrated spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of the simulated galaxies in order to determine how well the SFR indicators recover the instantaneous SFR in the simulations. The models underlying each SFR indicator must necessarily make assumptions about physical properties of the galaxies, e.g., the star formation history (SFH), whereas all such properties are known in the simulations. This enables us to test and compare SFR indicators in a way that is complementary to observational studies. We present one preliminary result of interest: even after correcting the Hα luminosity for dust using the Calzetti et al. (2000) attenuation law the SFR is significantly underestimated for simulated galaxies with SFR ≳ 10 M⊙ yr−1.


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (1) ◽  
pp. L6-L10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra N Tang ◽  
J J Eldridge ◽  
Elizabeth R Stanway ◽  
J C Bray

ABSTRACT We compare the impacts of uncertainties in both binary population synthesis models and the cosmic star formation history on the predicted rates of gravitational wave (GW) compact binary merger events. These uncertainties cause the predicted rates of GW events to vary by up to an order of magnitude. Varying the volume-averaged star formation rate density history of the Universe causes the weakest change to our predictions, while varying the metallicity evolution has the strongest effect. Double neutron star merger rates are more sensitive to assumed neutron star kick velocity than the cosmic star formation history. Varying certain parameters affects merger rates in different ways depending on the mass of the merging compact objects; thus some of the degeneracy may be broken by looking at all the event rates rather than restricting ourselves to one class of mergers.


Author(s):  
James E. Upjohn ◽  
Michael J. I. Brown ◽  
Andrew M. Hopkins ◽  
Nicolas J. Bonne

AbstractWe measure the cosmic star formation history out to z = 1.3 using a sample of 918 radio-selected star-forming galaxies within the 2-deg2 COSMOS field. To increase our sample size, we combine 1.4-GHz flux densities from the VLA-COSMOS catalogue with flux densities measured from the VLA-COSMOS radio continuum image at the positions of I < 26.5 galaxies, enabling us to detect 1.4-GHz sources as faint as 40 μJy. We find that radio measurements of the cosmic star formation history are highly dependent on sample completeness and models used to extrapolate the faint end of the radio luminosity function. For our preferred model of the luminosity function, we find the star formation rate density increases from 0.017 M⊙ yr−1 Mpc−3 at z ∼ 0.225 to 0.092 M⊙ yr−1 Mpc−3 at z ∼ 1.1, which agrees to within 40% of recent UV, IR and 3-GHz measurements of the cosmic star formation history.


2020 ◽  
Vol 495 (3) ◽  
pp. 2827-2843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Collacchioni ◽  
Claudia D P Lagos ◽  
Peter D Mitchell ◽  
Joop Schaye ◽  
Emily Wisnioski ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We study the effect of the gas accretion rate ($\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$) on the radial gas metallicity profile (RMP) of galaxies using the eagle cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, focusing on central galaxies of stellar mass M⋆ ≳ 109 M⊙ at z ≤ 1. We find clear relations between $\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$ and the slope of the RMP (measured within an effective radius), where higher $\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$ are associated with more negative slopes. The slope of the RMPs depends more strongly on $\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$ than on stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), or gas fraction, suggesting $\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$ to be a more fundamental driver of the RMP slope of galaxies. We find that eliminating the dependence on stellar mass is essential for pinning down the properties that shape the slope of the RMP. Although $\dot{M}_{\rm accr}$ is the main property modulating the slope of the RMP, we find that it causes other correlations that are more easily testable observationally: At fixed stellar mass, galaxies with more negative RMP slopes tend to have higher gas fractions and SFRs, while galaxies with lower gas fractions and SFRs tend to have flatter metallicity profiles within an effective radius.


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