Emergence of the Kennicutt-Schmidt Relation from the Small-Scale SFR-Density Relation
Astrophysics of Galaxies
2015-06-18 v2
Abstract
We use simulations of isolated galaxies with a few parsec resolution to explore the connection between the small-scale star formation rate - gas density relation and the induced large-scale correlation between the star formation rate surface density and the surface density of the molecular gas (the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation). We find that, in the simulations, a power-law small-scale "star formation law" directly translates into an identical power-law Kennicutt-Schmidt relation. If this conclusion holds in the reality as well, it implies that the observed approximately linear Kennicutt-Schmidt relation must reflect the approximately linear small-scale "star formation law".
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1401.0558,
title = {Emergence of the Kennicutt-Schmidt Relation from the Small-Scale SFR-Density Relation},
author = {Nickolay Y. Gnedin and Elizabeth J. Tasker and Yusuke Fujimoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.0558},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Replaced with the accepted version