What Suppresses Star Formation in Bulge-Dominated Early-Type Galaxies?

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to explore how galactic shear and compactness suppress star formation in early-type galaxies without removing molecular gas, challenging traditional stability criteria.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new physical mechanism involving galactic shear and compactness that explains star formation suppression beyond classical gravitational stability criteria.

Findings

Galactic shear driven by high central compactness inhibits gravitational collapse.

Suppressed galaxy has less star formation despite abundant molecular gas.

Classical Toomre-Q parameter may not fully capture star formation suppression.

Abstract

We investigate the physical origin of star formation suppression in gas-rich early-type galaxies using five high-resolution hydrodynamical idealized galaxy simulations, performed with the moving-mesh code AREPO. These simulations include one Milky Way-like galaxy and four early-type galaxies, of which one early-type galaxy is found to have significantly less star formation despite a substantial molecular gas reservoir. We apply a modified virial theorem to the overdensities in each galaxy to quantify the forces regulating their stability and thus star formation. We find evidence that, in the suppressed galaxy, strong Coriolis forces driven by elevated galactic shear may inhibit gravitational collapse. This is caused by the galaxy's high central compactness, providing a physical mechanism for the suppression of star formation that does not require the removal of molecular gas. In contrast, less compact early-type galaxies host more gravity-dominated clouds and therefore exhibit higher star formation rates. However, we find that this gravitational stability occurs without significantly increasing the classical Toomre-Q parameter, and therefore a new criterion for suppressed star formation may be needed. We also discuss the impact of our choice of overdensity scale and connections to observations of molecular clouds.