# Simulating the impact of the Smith Cloud

## TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamical simulations to explore how the Smith Cloud's impact could influence star formation in the Milky Way, revealing a potential short-term starburst for high-mass impacts.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed hydrodynamical simulation of the Smith Cloud's impact on the Milky Way's star formation, considering different mass scenarios and their observable effects.

## Key findings

- Low-mass cloud impact does not alter star formation rates.
- High-mass cloud impact causes a short-term starburst of up to 1 M_sun/yr.
- The starburst is localized and potentially observable.

## Abstract

We investigate the future evolution of the Smith Cloud by performing hydrodynamical simulations of the cloud impact onto the gaseous Milky Way Galactic disk. We assume a local origin for the cloud and thus do not include a dark matter component to stabilize it. Our main focus is the cloud's influence on the local and global star formation rate (SFR) of the Galaxy and whether or not it leads to an observable event in the far future. Our model assumes two extremes for the mass of the Smith Cloud, an upper mass limit of 10$^7$ M$_{\odot}$ and a lower mass limit of 10$^6$ M$_{\odot}$, compared to the observational value of a few 10$^6$ M$_{\odot}$. In addition, we also make the conservative assumption that the entirety of the cloud mass of the extended Smith Cloud is concentrated within the tip of the cloud. We find that the impact of the low-mass cloud produces no noticeable change in neither the global SFR nor the local SFR at the cloud impact site within the galactic disk. For the high-mass cloud we find a short-term (roughly 5 Myr) increase of the global SFR of up to 1 M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, which nearly doubles the normal Milky Way SFR. This highly localized starburst should be observable.