Gas accretion at high redshift: cold flows all the way

TL;DR

This paper uses cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to analyze how cold gas flows fuel galaxy growth at high redshift, revealing that cold filamentary accretion dominates star formation in massive galaxies up to z ~ 4.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian hierarchical model to describe the evolution of cold accretion fraction with redshift and halo mass, providing new insights into gas accretion modes over cosmic time.

Findings

Cold filamentary accretion sustains high star formation rates at z ~ 2-4.

Over 75% of star-forming gas is accreted via cold flows at high redshift.

The critical mass for cold-to-hot accretion transition evolves with redshift as log(Mc) ∝ log(1+z)^1.7.

Abstract

We study in detail how massive galaxies accrete gas through cosmic time using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations from the High-z Evolution of Large and Luminous Objects (HELLO) and the Numerical Investigation of a Hundred Astrophysical Objects (NIHAO) projects. We find that accretion through cold filaments at high redshift (z ~ 2-4) is a key factor in maintaining the high star formation rates (> 100 Msun/yr) observed in these galaxies, and that more than 75% of the total gas participating in the star formation process is accreted via this channel at high z even in haloes well above 10^12 Msun. The low volume occupancy of the filaments allows plenty of space for massive gas outflows generated by the vigorous star formation and AGN activity, with the cold incoming gas and the hot outflowing gas barely interacting. We present a model based on a Bayesian hierarchical formalism that accurately describes the evolution of the cold fraction accretion with redshift and halo mass. Our model predicts a relatively constant critical mass (Mc) for the cold-to-hot transition up to z ~ 1.3 and an evolving critical mass log(Mc) proportional to log(1+z)^1.7 at higher redshift. Overall, our findings provide deeper insight into the cosmic evolution of gas accretion modes and offer a robust framework for understanding how cold accretion contributes to galaxy growth across different epochs.