The Baryon Cycle of Dwarf Galaxies: Dark, Bursty, Gas-Rich Polluters

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution cosmological simulations to explore the baryon cycle in dwarf galaxies, revealing how their properties depend on gravitational potential and feedback processes, and matching several observed features.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation-based analysis of dwarf galaxy evolution, highlighting the impact of feedback, gas dynamics, and potential well depth on their observable properties.

Findings

Low-mass halos (<10^9 Msun) lack star formation due to density thresholds.

More massive dwarfs show bursty star formation and high gas fractions.

Galactic outflows enrich the intergalactic medium but do not quench star formation.

Abstract

We present results from a fully cosmological, very high-resolution, LCDM "zoom-in" simulation of a group of seven field dwarf galaxies with present-day virial masses in the range M_vir=4.4e8-3.6e10 Msun. The simulation includes a blastwave scheme for supernova feedback, a star formation recipe based on a high gas density threshold, metal-dependent radiative cooling, a scheme for the turbulent diffusion of metals and thermal energy, and a uniform UV background that modifies the ionization and excitation state of the gas. The properties of the simulated dwarfs are strongly modulated by the depth of the gravitational potential well. All three halos with M_vir < 1e9 Msun are devoid of stars, as they never reach the density threshold for star formation of 100 atoms/cc. The other four, M_vir > 1e9 Msun dwarfs have blue colors, low star formation efficiencies, high cold gas to stellar mass ratios, and low stellar metallicities. Their bursty star formation histories are characterized by peak specific star formation rates in excess of 50-100 1/Gyr, far outside the realm of normal, more massive galaxies, and in agreement with observations of extreme emission-line starbursting dwarfs by the Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey. Metal-enriched galactic outflows produce sub-solar effective yields and pollute with heavy elements a Mpc-size region of the intergalactic medium, but are not sufficient to completely quench star formation activity and are not ubiquitous in our dwarfs. Within the limited size of the sample, our simulations appear to simultaneously reproduce the observed stellar mass and cold gas content, resolved star formation histories, stellar kinematics, and metallicities of field dwarfs in the Local Volume.