Entropy Injection as a Global Feedback Mechanism

Abstract

Both preheating of the intergalactic medium and radiative cooling of low entropy gas have been proposed to explain the deviation from self-similarity in the cluster L_x-T_x relation and the observed entropy floor in these systems. However, severe overcooling of gas in groups is necessary for radiative cooling alone to explain the observations. Non-gravitational entropy injection must therefore still be important in these systems. We point out that on scales of groups and below, gas heated to the required entropy floor cannot cool in a Hubble time, regardless of its subsequent adiabatic compression. Preheating therefore shuts off the gas supply to galaxies, and should be an important global feedback mechanism for galaxy formation. Constraints on global gas cooling can be placed from the joint evolution of the comoving star formation rate and neutral gas density. Preheating at high redshift can be ruled out; however the data does not rule out passive gas consumption without inflow since z~2. Since for preheated gas t_cool > t_dyn, we speculate that preheating could play a role in determining the Hubble sequence: at a given mass scale, high sigma peaks in the density field collapse early to form ellipticals, while low sigma peaks collapse late and quiescently accrete preheated gas to form spirals. The entropy produced by large scale shock-heating of the intergalatic medium is significant only at late times, z<1, and cannot produce these effects.