Galaxy Simulation with Dust Formation and Destruction

TL;DR

This paper presents a new SPH simulation model for galaxy evolution that self-consistently includes dust formation, destruction, and growth processes, reproducing observed dust distribution gradients over galaxy ages.

Contribution

Introduces a comprehensive dust evolution model in SPH galaxy simulations, accounting for grain size distribution, growth, and destruction mechanisms, applicable to cosmological simulations.

Findings

Dust-to-metal ratio becomes invalid after 0.2 Gyr due to grain growth.

Shattering enhances grain growth by increasing surface area.

Simulations match observed radial dust-to-gas and depletion gradients.

Abstract

We perform smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of an isolated galaxy with a new treatment for dust formation and destruction. To this aim, we treat dust and metal production self-consistently with star formation and supernova feedback. For dust, we consider a simplified model of grain size distribution by representing the entire range of grain sizes with large and small grains. We include dust production in stellar ejecta, dust destruction by supernova (SN) shocks, grain growth by accretion and coagulation, and grain disruption by shattering. We find that the assumption of fixed dust-to-metal mass ratio becomes no longer valid when the galaxy is older than 0.2 Gyr, at which point the grain growth by accretion starts to contribute to the nonlinear rise of dust-to-gas ratio. As expected in our previous one-zone model, shattering triggers grain growth by accretion since it increases the total surface area of grains. Coagulation becomes significant when the galaxy age is greater than $\sim$ 1 Gyr: at this epoch the abundance of small grains becomes high enough to raise the coagulation rate of small grains. We further compare the radial profiles of dust-to-gas ratio $(\mathcal{D})$ and dust-to-metal ratio $(\mathcal{D}/Z)$ (i.e., depletion) at various ages with observational data. We find that our simulations broadly reproduce the radial gradients of dust-to-gas ratio and depletion. In the early epoch ($\lesssim 0.3$ Gyr), the radial gradient of $\mathcal{D}$ follows the metallicity gradient with $\mathcal{D}/Z$ determined by the dust condensation efficiency in stellar ejecta, while the $\mathcal{D}$ gradient is steeper than the $Z$ gradient at the later epochs because of grain growth by accretion. The framework developed in this paper is applicable to any SPH-based galaxy evolution simulations including cosmological ones.