TY - JOUR
T1 - Control of star formation in galaxies by gravitational instability
AU - Li, Yuexing
AU - Low, Mordecai Mark Mac
AU - Klessen, Ralf S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank V. Springel for making both GADGET and his galaxy initial condition generator available, and for useful discussions; A.-K. Jappsen for participating in the implementation of sink particles in GADGET; and F. Adams, J. Dalcanton, R. Kennicutt, J. Lee, C. Martin, D. McCray, T. Quinn, M. Shara, and J. van Gorkom for useful discussions. The referee, F. Gov-ernato, also gave valuable comments. This work was supported by NSF grants AST99-85392 and AST03-07854, NASA grant NAG5-13028, and DFG Emmy Noether grant KL1358/1. Computations were performed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center, supported by the NSF, on the Parallel Computing Facility of the AMNH, and on an Ultrasparc III cluster generously donated by Sun Microsystems.
PY - 2005/2/10
Y1 - 2005/2/10
N2 - We study gravitational instability and consequent star formation in a wide range of isolated disk galaxies, using three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations at a resolution sufficient to fully resolve gravitational collapse. Stellar feedback is represented by an isothermal equation of state. Absorbing sink particles are inserted in dynamically bound, converging regions with number density n > 103 cm-3 to directly measure the mass of gravitationally collapsing gas available for star formation. Our models quantitatively reproduce not only the observed Schmidt law, but also the observed star formation threshold in disk galaxies. Our results suggest that the dominant physical mechanism determining the star formation rate is just the strength of gravitational instability, with feedback primarily functioning to maintain a roughly constant effective sound speed.
AB - We study gravitational instability and consequent star formation in a wide range of isolated disk galaxies, using three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations at a resolution sufficient to fully resolve gravitational collapse. Stellar feedback is represented by an isothermal equation of state. Absorbing sink particles are inserted in dynamically bound, converging regions with number density n > 103 cm-3 to directly measure the mass of gravitationally collapsing gas available for star formation. Our models quantitatively reproduce not only the observed Schmidt law, but also the observed star formation threshold in disk galaxies. Our results suggest that the dominant physical mechanism determining the star formation rate is just the strength of gravitational instability, with feedback primarily functioning to maintain a roughly constant effective sound speed.
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U2 - 10.1086/428497
DO - 10.1086/428497
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:15944387416
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 620
SP - L19-L22
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1 II
ER -