Quantifying Bursty Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how bursty star formation in dwarf galaxies leaves distinct chemical signatures, proposing a statistical method to identify episodic star formation histories from chemical abundance data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using Gaussian mixture models to detect discontinuous chemical evolution tracks indicative of bursty star formation in dwarf galaxies.

Findings

APOGEE data suggests dwarf galaxies have episodic star formation with ~300 Myr quiescent periods.

The method can distinguish continuous vs. bursty star formation histories.

Future large surveys will enable detailed studies of short timescale star formation in dwarf galaxies.

Abstract

Dwarf galaxy star formation histories are theoretically expected to be bursty, potentially leaving distinct imprints on their chemical evolution. We propose that episodic starbursts with quiescent periods longer than $\sim$100 Myr should lead to discontinuous tracks in a dwarf galaxy's [$\alpha$/Fe]-[Fe/H] chemical abundance plane, with metallicity gaps as large as 0.3-0.5 dex at [Fe/H] = -2. This occurs due to continued Fe production by Type Ia supernovae during quiescent periods. We demonstrate that Gaussian mixture models can statistically distinguish discontinuous and continuous tracks based on the Akaike Information Criterion. Applying this method to APOGEE observations of the Sculptor dSph galaxy suggests an episodic star formation history with $\sim$300 Myr quiescent periods. While current dwarf galaxy datasets are limited by small spectroscopic sample sizes, future surveys and extremely large telescopes will enable determining large numbers of precise chemical abundances, opening up the investigation of very short timescales in early dwarf galaxy formation. This unprecedentedly high time resolution of dwarf galaxy formation in the early Universe has important implications for understanding both reionization in the early Universe and the episodic star formation cycle of dwarf galaxies.