Simulating the effect of photoheating feedback during reionization
Name
1903.06167.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
2.66 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
5eca79a6be200bb875331c5b2ecbdd82
Author(s)
Wu, Xiaohan
Kannan, Rahul
Marinacci, Federico
Vogelsberger, Mark
Hernquist, Lars
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2019 The Author(s). We present self-consistent radiation hydrodynamic simulations of hydrogen reionization performed with AREPO-RT complemented by a state-of-the-art galaxy formation model. We examine how photoheating feedback, due to reionization, shapes the galaxies properties. Our fiducial model completes reionization by z ≈ 6 and matches observations of the Ly α forest, the cosmic microwave background electron scattering optical depth, the high-redshift ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function, and stellar mass function. Contrary to previous works, photoheating suppresses star formation rates by more than 50 per cent only in haloes less massive than ∼108.4 M (∼108.8 M) at z = 6 (z = 5), suggesting inefficient photoheating feedback from photons within galaxies. The use of a uniform UV background that heats up the gas at z ≈ 10.7 generates an earlier onset of suppression of star formation compared to our fiducial model. This discrepancy can be mitigated by adopting a UV background model with a more realistic reionization history. In the absence of stellar feedback, photoheating alone is only able to quench haloes less massive than ∼109 M at z 5, implying that photoheating feedback is sub-dominant in regulating star formation. In addition, stellar feedback, implemented as a non-local galactic wind scheme in the simulations, weakens the strength of photoheating feedback by reducing the amount of stellar sources. Most importantly, photoheating does not leave observable imprints in the UV luminosity function, stellar mass function, or the cosmic star formation rate density. The feasibility of using these observables to detect imprints of reionization therefore requires further investigation.
MIT Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/MNRAS/STZ1726
