Star Formation and Feedback in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations--I. Isolated Galaxies
Abstract
We present an analysis of star formation and feedback recipes appropriate for galactic smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. Using an isolated Milky Way-like galaxy, we constrain these recipes based on well-established observational results. Our star formation recipe is based on that of Katz (1992) with the additional inclusion of physically motivated supernova feedback recipes. We propose a new feedback recipe in which type II supernovae are modelled using an analytical treatment of blastwaves. With this feedback mechanism and a tuning of other star formation parameters, the star formation in our isolated Milky Way-like galaxy is constant and follows the slope and normalisation of the observed Schmidt law. In addition, we reproduce the low density cutoff and filamentary structure of star formation observed in disk galaxies. Our final recipe will enable better comparison of cosmological N-body simulations with observations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0602350,
title = {Star Formation and Feedback in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic Simulations--I. Isolated Galaxies},
author = {Greg Stinson and Anil Seth and Neal Katz and James Wadsley and Fabio Governato and Tom Quinn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0602350},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 22 figures, accepted to MNRAS, full resolution figures, more data, and movies at http://hpcc.astro.washington.edu/starformation