# Efficiency of metal mixing in dwarf galaxies

## TL;DR

This study uses simulations to investigate metal mixing efficiency in dwarf galaxies, revealing that turbulence-driven mixing occurs rapidly and can be constrained by Ba abundance observations.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a turbulence-based metal mixing model in dwarf galaxy simulations and identifies the diffusion scaling factor needed to match observed Ba abundances.

## Key findings

- Metal mixing timescale is less than 40 Myr.
- A diffusion scaling factor > 0.01 reproduces Ba observations.
- Metal mixing occurs faster than the galaxy’s dynamical times.

## Abstract

Metal mixing plays critical roles in the enrichment of metals in galaxies. The abundance of elements such as Mg, Fe, and Ba in metal-poor stars help us understand the metal mixing in galaxies. However, the efficiency of metal mixing in galaxies is not yet understood. Here we report a series of $N$-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of dwarf galaxies with different efficiencies of metal mixing using turbulence-induced mixing model. We show that metal mixing apparently occurs in dwarf galaxies from Mg and Ba abundance. We find that the scaling factor for metal diffusion larger than 0.01 is necessary to reproduce the observation of Ba abundance in dwarf galaxies. This value is consistent with the value expected from turbulence theory and experiment. We also find that timescale of metal mixing is less than 40 Myr. This timescale is shorter than that of typical dynamical times of dwarf galaxies. We demonstrate that the determination of a degree of scatters of Ba abundance by the observation will help us to constrain the efficiency of metal mixing more precisely.