Subcritical Star Formation in Galactic Discs: the role of Dark Matter and Magnetic Field

TL;DR

This paper explores how dark matter and magnetic fields influence star formation in galactic outskirts, challenging the traditional threshold model by suggesting these components can induce star formation even when gas appears stable.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that dark matter and magnetic fields modify the stability criterion for star formation, especially in low-density galactic regions, expanding the understanding of star formation triggers.

Findings

Dark matter contributes to disc instability in subcritical regions.

Effective Q-parameters including dark matter better predict star formation.

Dark matter's role is significant in outer galactic disc star formation.

Abstract

We discuss the occurrence of subcritical star formation in the outskirts of some galactic discs and across LSB galaxies, contrary to the picture that star formation happens only when the gas surface density is above a critical threshold density. This raises the question of whether the Toomre Q-criterion for gas alone is valid for correlating the gas distribution to star formation or rather some effective Q-parameter, taking account of components such as stars, dark matter and magnetic fields, is more representative of the correlation between gas instability and star formation activity. As a potential candidate, we investigate the role of dark matter in triggering subcritical star formation, particularly at the outskirts where dark matter is dominant. Indeed, our axisymmetric analysis favours the picture that dark matter contributes to disc instability at the subcritical regime where gas seems stable when dark matter is neglected.