Can I read VINTERGATAN IV: Cosmic phases of star formation in Milky Way-like galaxies on EtoBox?

VINTERGATAN IV: Cosmic phases of star formation in Milky Way-like galaxies by Otero, Álvaro Segovia; Renaud, Florent; Agertz, Oscar is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is VINTERGATAN IV: Cosmic phases of star formation in Milky Way-like galaxies about?

The star formation history of a galaxy is modulated by a plethora of internal processes and environmental conditions. The details of how these evolve and couple together is not fully understood yet. In this work, we study the effects that galaxy mergers and morphological transformations have on setting different modes of star formation at galactic scales and across cosmic time. We monitor the global properties of VINTERGATAN, a 20 pc resolution cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-type galaxy. Between redshifts 1 and 5, we find that major mergers trigger multiple starburst episodes, corresponding to a tenfold drop of the gas depletion time down to 100 Myr. Bursty star formation is enabled by the emergence of a galactic disc, when the rotational velocity of gas starts to dominate over its velocity dispersion. Coherent motions of gas then outweigh disordered ones, such that the galaxy responds to merger-induced forcings by redistributing large amounts of gas towards high densities. As a result, the overall star formation rate is enhanced with an associated decrease in the depletion time. Before redshift 5, mergers are expected to be even more frequent. However, a more turbu

Author

Otero, Álvaro Segovia; Renaud, Florent; Agertz, Oscar

Published

2022

Language

EN