Abundance of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers in cosmological SPH simulations (original) (raw)

Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers in Cosmological SPH Simulations: the

Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union

We study the distribution of star formation rate (SFR) and metallicity of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) using cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of the Lambda cold dark matter (CDM) model. Our simulations include a phenomenological model for feedback by galactic winds which allows us to examine the effect of galactic outflows on the distribution of SFR and metallicity of DLAs. For models with strong galactic winds, we obtain good agreement with recent observations with respect to total neutral hydrogen mass density, N_{HI} column-density distribution, abundance of DLAs, and for the distribution of SFR in DLAs. However, we also find that the median metallicity of simulated DLAs is higher than the values typically observed by nearly an order of magnitude. This discrepancy with observations could be due to shortcomings in the treatment of the supernova feedback or the multiphase structure of the gas in our current simulations. Recent observations by Wo...

Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers in Cosmological SPH Simulations: the "metallicity problem

Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union

We study the distribution of star formation rate (SFR) and metallicity of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) using cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of the Lambda cold dark matter model. Our simulations include a phenomenological model for feedback by galactic winds which allows us to examine the effect of galactic outflows on the distribution of SFR and metallicity of DLAs. For models with strong galactic winds, we obtain good agreement with recent observations with respect to total neutral hydrogen mass density, N_HI column-density distribution, abundance of DLAs, and for the distribution of SFR in DLAs. However, we also find that the median metallicity of simulated DLAs is higher than the values typically observed by nearly an order of magnitude. This discrepancy with observations could be due to shortcomings in the treatment of the supernova feedback or the multiphase structure of the gas in our current simulations. Recent observations by Wolfe et a...

Star formation rate and metallicity of damped Lyman� absorbers in cosmological SPH simulations

We study the distribution of the star formation rate (SFR) and metallicity of damped Lyman-α absorbers (DLAs) in the redshift range z = 0 4.5 using cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of thecold dark matter model. Our simulations include standard radiative cooling and heating with a uniform UV background, star formation, supernova (SN) feedback, as well as a phenomenological model for feedback by galactic winds. The latter allows us to examine, in particular, the effect of galactic outflows on the distribution of the SFR and metallicity of DLAs. We employ a "conservative entropy" formulation of SPH which alleviates numerical overcooling effects that affected earlier simulations. In addition, we utilise a series of simulations of varying boxsize and particle number to investigate the impact of numerical resolution on our results. We find that there is a positive correlation between the projected stellar mass density and the neutral hydrogen column...

Galaxy cold gas contents in modern cosmological hydrodynamic simulations

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2020

We present a comparison of galaxy atomic and molecular gas properties in three recent cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, namely SIMBA, EAGLE, and IllustrisTNG, versus observations from z ∼ 0 to 2. These simulations all rely on similar subresolution prescriptions to model cold interstellar gas that they cannot represent directly, and qualitatively reproduce the observed z ≈ 0 H i and H2 mass functions (HIMFs and H2MFs, respectively), CO(1–0) luminosity functions (COLFs), and gas scaling relations versus stellar mass, specific star formation rate, and stellar surface density μ*, with some quantitative differences. To compare to the COLF, we apply an H2-to-CO conversion factor to the simulated galaxies based on their average molecular surface density and metallicity, yielding substantial variations in αCO and significant differences between models. Using this, predicted z = 0 COLFs agree better with data than predicted H2MFs. Out to z ∼ 2, EAGLE’s and SIMBA’s HIMFs and COLFs strong...