Kavli Affiliate: Mark Vogelsberger
| First 5 Authors: Eric Zhang, Eric Zhang, , ,
| Summary:
It is often understood that supernova (SN) feedback in galaxies is
responsible for regulating star formation and generating gaseous outflows.
However, a detailed look at their effect on the local interstellar medium (ISM)
on small mass scales in simulations shows that these processes proceed in
clearly distinct channels. We demonstrate this finding in two independent
simulations with solar-mass resolution, LYRA and RIGEL, of an isolated dwarf
galaxy. Focusing on the immediate environment surrounding SNe, our findings
suggest that the large-scale effect of a given SN on the galaxy is best
predicted by its immediate local density. Outflows are driven by SNe in diffuse
regions expanding to their cooling radii on large ($sim$ kpc) scales, while
dense star-forming regions are disrupted in a localized (sim pc) manner.
However, these separate feedback channels are only distinguishable at very high
numerical resolutions capable of following scales $ll 10^3 M_odot$. On larger
scales, ISM densities are greatly mis-estimated, and differences between local
environments of SNe become severely washed out. We demonstrate the practical
implications of this effect by comparing with a mid-resolution simulation
($M_rm ptcl. sim 200 M_odot$) of the same dwarf using the SMUGGLE model.
The coarse-resolution simulation cannot self-consistently determine whether a
given SN is responsible for generating outflows or suppressing star formation,
suggesting that emergent galaxy physics such as star formation regulation
through hot-phase outflows is fundamentally unresolvable by subgrid stellar
feedback models, without appealing directly to simulations with highly resolved
ISM.
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