Evolution of giant molecular clouds across cosmic time

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution cosmological simulations to analyze how giant molecular cloud properties evolve over cosmic time in Milky Way-like and dwarf galaxies, revealing mostly stable properties with some transient extreme events.

Contribution

First time-dependent analysis of GMC evolution in cosmological simulations, showing stable bulk properties over time with some brief extreme variations.

Findings

GMC properties are mostly stable after the first Gyr of galaxy evolution.

Star formation occurs mainly in self-gravitating gas structures resembling observed GMCs.

Metallicity increases steadily, with a slight decrease in cloud temperatures over cosmic time.

Abstract

Giant molecular clouds (GMCs) are well-studied in the local Universe, however, exactly how their properties vary during galaxy evolution is poorly understood due to challenging resolution requirements, both observational and computational. We present the first time-dependent analysis of giant molecular clouds in a Milky Way-like galaxy and an LMC-like dwarf galaxy of the FIRE-2 (Feedback In Realistic Environments) simulation suite, which have sufficient resolution to predict the bulk properties of GMCs in cosmological galaxy formation self-consistently. We show explicitly that the majority of star formation outside the galactic center occurs within self-gravitating gas structures that have properties consistent with observed bound GMCs. We find that the typical cloud bulk properties such as mass and surface density do not vary more than a factor of 2 in any systematic way after the first Gyr of cosmic evolution within a given galaxy from its progenitor. While the median properties are constant, the tails of the distributions can briefly undergo drastic changes, which can produce very massive and dense self-gravitating gas clouds. Once the galaxy forms, we identify only two systematic trends in bulk properties over cosmic time: a steady increase in metallicity produced by previous stellar populations and a weak decrease in bulk cloud temperatures. With the exception of metallicity we find no significant differences in cloud properties between the Milky Way-like and dwarf galaxies. These results have important implications for cosmological star and star cluster formation and put especially strong constraints on theories relating the stellar initial mass function to cloud properties.