Local photoionization feedback effects on galaxies

TL;DR

This study models local radiation effects on galaxy evolution, showing significant impacts on galaxy properties, gas temperatures, and star formation, with variations depending on galaxy mass and UV background models.

Contribution

Introduces an optically thin approximation for local radiation in galaxy simulations, revealing its influence on galaxy properties and circumgalactic medium over cosmic time.

Findings

Local radiation increases CGM temperature and inward boundary.

Suppresses stellar mass growth by ~20% by z=0.

Halves the HI mass and shifts HI column density distributions.

Abstract

We implement an optically thin approximation for the effects of the local radiation field from stars and hot gas on the gas heating and cooling in the N-body SPH code GASOLINE2. We resimulate three galaxies from the NIHAO project: one dwarf, one Milky Way-like and one massive spiral, and study what are the local radiation field effects on various galaxy properties. We also study the effects of varying the Ultra Violet Background (UVB) model, by running the same galaxies with two different UVBs. Galaxy properties at $z=0$ like stellar mass, stellar effective mass radius, HI mass, and radial extent of the HI disc, show significant changes between the models with and without the local radiation field, and smaller differences between the two UVB models. The intrinsic effect of the local radiation field through cosmic time is to increase the equilibrium temperature at the interface between the galaxies and their circumgalactic media (CGM), moving this boundary inwards, while leaving relatively unchanged the gas inflow rate. Consequently, the temperature of the inflow increases when considering the local radiation sources. This temperature increase is a function of total galaxy mass, with a median CGM temperature difference of one order of magnitude for the massive spiral. The local radiation field suppresses the stellar mass growth by $\sim$20 per cent by $z=0$ for all three galaxies, while the HI mass is roughly halfed. The differences in the gas phase diagrams, significantly impact the HI column densities, shifting their peaks in the distributions towards lower $N_{\rm HI}$.