arXiv subjects

Brian W. O'Shea

Publications and source records attributed to Brian W. O'Shea.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

The Role of Radiation and Halo Mergers in Pop III Star Formation

We present a study of the co-evolution of a population of primordial star-forming minihalos at Cosmic Dawn. In this study, we highlight the influence of individual Population III stars on the ability of nearby minihalos to form sufficient molecular hydrogen to undergo star formation. In the absence of radiation, we find the minimum halo mass required to bring about collapse to be ~10^5 Msun, this increases to ~10^6 Msun after two stars have formed. We find an inverse relationship between halo mass and the time required for it to recover its molecular gas after being disrupted by radiation from a nearby star. We also take advantage of the extremely high resolution to investigate the effects of major and minor mergers on the gas content of star-forming minihalos. Contrary to previous claims of fallback of supernova ejecta, we find minihalos evacuated after hosting Pop III stars primarily recover gas through mergers with undisturbed halos. We identify an intriguing type of major merger between recently evacuated halos and gas-rich ones, finding that these 'mixed' mergers accelerate star formation instead of suppressing it like their low redshift counterparts. We attribute this to the gas-poor nature of one of the merging halos resulting in no significant rise in temperature or turbulence and instead inducing a rapid increase in central density and hydrostatic pressure. This constitutes a novel formation pathway for Pop III stars and establishes major mergers as potentially the primary source of gas, thus redefining the role of major mergers at this epoch.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE) VI: The Circumgalactic Medium of $L^*$ Galaxies is Supported in an Emergent, Non-Hydrostatic Equilibrium

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is often assumed to exist in or near hydrostatic equilibrium with the regulation of accretion and the effects of feedback treated as perturbations to a stable balance between gravity and thermal pressure. We investigate global hydrostatic equilibrium in the CGM using four highly-resolved $L^*$ galaxies from the Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE) project. The FOGGIE simulations were specifically targeted at fine spatial and mass resolution in the CGM ($Δx \lesssim 1$ kpc $h^{-1}$ and $M \simeq 200M_\odot$). We develop a new analysis framework that calculates the forces provided by thermal pressure gradients, turbulent pressure gradients, ram pressure gradients of large-scale radial bulk flows, centrifugal rotation, and gravity acting on the gas in the CGM. Thermal and turbulent pressure gradients vary strongly on scales of $\lesssim5$ kpc throughout the CGM. Thermal pressure gradients provide the main supporting force only beyond $\sim 0.25R_{200}$, or $\sim50$ kpc at $z=0$. Within $\sim0.25R_{200}$, turbulent pressure gradients and rotational support provide stronger forces than thermal pressure. More generally, we find that global equilibrium models are neither appropriate nor predictive for the small scales probed by absorption line observations of the CGM. Local conditions generally cannot be derived by assuming a global equilibrium, but an emergent global equilibrium balancing radially inward and outward forces is obtained when averaging over the non-equilibrium local conditions on large scales in space and time. Approximate hydrostatic equilibrium holds only at large distances from galaxies even when averaging out small-scale variations.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

As a matter of dynamical range -- scale dependent energy dynamics in MHD turbulence

Magnetized turbulence is ubiquitous in many astrophysical and terrestrial plasmas but no universal theory exists. Even the detailed energy dynamics in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence are still not well understood. We present a suite of subsonic, super-Alfvénic, high plasma-beta MHD turbulence simulations that only vary in their dynamical range, i.e., in their separation between the large-scale forcing and dissipation scales, and their dissipation mechanism (implicit large eddy simulation, ILES, versus and direct numerical simulation, DNS). Using an energy transfer analysis framework we calculate the effective, numerical viscosities and resistivities and demonstrate and that all ILES calculations of MHD turbulence are resolved and correspond to an equivalent visco-resistive MHD turbulence calculation. Increasing the number of grid points used in an ILES corresponds to lowering the dissipation coefficients, i.e., larger (kinetic and magnetic) Reynolds numbers for a constant forcing scale. Independently, we use this same framework to demonstrate that -- contrary to hydrodynamic turbulence -- the cross-scale energy fluxes are not constant in MHD turbulence. This applies both to different mediators (such as cascade processes or magnetic tension) for a given dynamical range as well as to a dependence on the dynamical range itself, which determines the physical properties of the flow. We do not observe any indication of convergence even at the highest resolution (largest Reynolds numbers) simulation at $2{,}048^3$ cells, calling into question whether an asymptotic regime in MHD turbulence exists, and, if so, what it looks like.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Possibilities and Limitations of Kinematically Identifying Stars from Accreted Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies

The Milky Way has accreted many ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs), and stars from these galaxies can be found throughout our Galaxy today. Studying these stars provides insight into galaxy formation and early chemical enrichment, but identifying them is difficult. Clustering stellar dynamics in 4D phase space ($E$, $L_z$, $J_r$, $J_z$) is one method of identifying accreted structure which is currently being utilized in the search for accreted UFDs. We produce 32 simulated stellar halos using particle tagging with the \textit{Caterpillar} simulation suite and thoroughly test the abilities of different clustering algorithms to recover tidally disrupted UFD remnants. We perform over 10,000 clustering runs, testing seven clustering algorithms, roughly twenty hyperparameter choices per algorithm, and six different types of data sets each with up to 32 simulated samples. Of the seven algorithms, HDBSCAN most consistently balances UFD recovery rates and cluster realness rates. We find that even in highly idealized cases, the vast majority of clusters found by clustering algorithms do not correspond to real accreted UFD remnants and we can generally only recover $6\%$ of UFDs remnants at best. These results focus exclusively on groups of stars from UFDs, which have weak dynamic signatures compared to the background of other stars. The recoverable UFD remnants are those that accreted recently, $z_{\text{accretion}}\lesssim 0.5$. Based on these results, we make recommendations to help guide the search for dynamically-linked clusters of UFD stars in observational data. We find that real clusters generally have higher median energy and $J_r$, providing a way to help identify real vs. fake clusters. We also recommend incorporating chemical tagging as a way to improve clustering results.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Seeking Self-Regulating Simulations of Idealized Milky Way-Like Galaxies

Precipitation is potentially a mechanism through which the circumgalactic medium (CGM) can regulate a galaxy's star formation. Here we present idealized simulations of isolated Milky Way-like galaxies intended to examine the ability of galaxies to self-regulate their star formation, particularly via precipitation. Our simulations are the first CGM-focused idealized models to include stellar feedback due to the explicit formation of stars. We also examine the impact of rotation in the CGM. Using six simulations, we explore variations in the initial CGM $t_{\rm cool}/t_{\rm ff}$ ratio and rotation profile. Those variations affect the amount of star formation and gas accretion within the galactic disk. Our simulations are sensitive to their initial conditions, requiring us to gradually increase the efficiency of stellar feedback to avoid destroying the CGM before its gas can be accreted. Despite this gradual increase, the resulting outflows still evacuate large, hot cavities within the CGM and even beyond $r_{200}$. Some of the CGM gas avoids interacting with the cavities and is able to feed the disk along its midplane, but the cooling of feedback-heated gas far from the midplane is too slow to supply the disk with additional gas. Our simulations illustrate the importance of physical mechanisms in the outer CGM and IGM for star formation regulation in Milky Way-scale halos.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Atmospheric Circulation in Simulations of the AGN-CGM Connection at Halo Masses $\sim 10^{13.5}, M_\odot$

Coupling between active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is critical to the interplay between radiative cooling and feedback heating in the atmospheres of the universe's most massive galaxies. This paper presents a detailed analysis of numerical simulations showing how kinetic AGN feedback with a strong momentum flux interacts with the CGM. Our analysis shows that large scale CGM circulation plays an important role in reconfiguring the galactic atmosphere and regulating the atmosphere's central entropy level. We find that most of the AGN energy output goes into lifting of circumgalactic gas rather than heating of atmospheric gas within the galaxy, consequently reconfiguring the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in our simulations. Large scale (10s of kpc) circulation of the CGM on ~ 10-100 kpc scales therefore plays a critical role in preventing over-cooling of gas in these simulated galaxies. The simulations also show that our choices of accretion efficiency and jet opening angle significantly affect the AGN-CGM coupling. Reducing the jet opening angle to quarter of the fiducial opening angle increases the jet momentum flux, enabling it to drill through to larger radii without effectively coupling with the CGM at the center ( $r < 5$ kpc). Outflows with a lower momentum flux decelerate and thermalize the bulk of their energy at smaller radii ($r \lesssim 10$ ).

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Tests of AGN Feedback Kernels in Simulated Galaxy Clusters

In cool-core galaxy clusters with central cooling times much shorter than a Hubble time, condensation of the ambient central gas is regulated by a heating mechanism, probably an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Previous analytical work has suggested that certain radial distributions of heat input may result in convergence to a quasi-steady global state that does not substantively change on the timescale for radiative cooling, even if the heating and cooling are not locally in balance. To test this hypothesis, we simulate idealized galaxy cluster halos using the \ENZO code with an idealized, spherically symmetric heat-input kernel intended to emulate. Thermal energy is distributed with radius according to a range of kernels, in which total heating is updated to match total cooling every $10 ~\text{Myr}$. Some heating kernels can maintain quasi-steady global configurations, but no kernel we tested produces a quasi-steady state with central entropy as low as those observed in cool-core clusters. The general behavior of the simulations depends on the proportion of heating in the inner $10 ~\text{kpc}$, with low central heating leading to central cooling catastrophes, high central heating creating a central convective zone with an inverted entropy gradient, and intermediate central heating resulting in a flat central entropy profile that exceeds observations. The timescale on which our simulated halos fall into an unsteady multiphase state is proportional to the square of the cooling time of the lowest entropy gas, allowing more centrally concentrated heating to maintain a longer lasting steady state.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Some First Stars Were Red: Detecting Signatures of Massive Population III Formation Through Long-Term Stochastic Color Variations

Identifying stars formed in pristine environments (Pop III) within the first billion years is vital to uncovering the earliest growth and chemical evolution of galaxies. Pop III galaxies, however, are typically expected to be too faint and too few in number to be detectable by forthcoming instruments without extremely long integration times and/or extreme lensing. In an environment, however, where star formation is suppressed until a halo crosses the atomic cooling limit (e.g., by a modest Lyman-Werner flux, high baryonic streaming velocities, and/or dynamical heating effects),primordial halos can form substantially more numerous and more massive stars. Some of these stars will in-turn be accreting more rapidly than they can thermally relax at any given time. Using high resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of massive star formation in high-z halos, we find that such rapidly accreting stars produce prominent spectral features which would be detectable by {\it JWST}. The rapid accretion episodes within the halo lead to stochastic reprocessing of 0--20\% of the total stellar emission into the rest-frame optical over long timescales, a unique signature which may allow deep observations to identify such objects out to $z \sim 10-13$ using mid- and wide-band NIRCam colors alone.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE) V: The Virial Temperature Does Not Describe Gas in a Virialized Galaxy Halo

The classical definition of the virial temperature of a galaxy halo excludes a fundamental contribution to the energy partition of the halo: the kinetic energy of non-thermal gas motions. Using simulations of low-redshift, $\sim L^*$ galaxies from the FOGGIE project (Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo) that are optimized to resolve low-density gas, we show that the kinetic energy of non-thermal motions is roughly equal to the energy of thermal motions. The simulated FOGGIE halos have $\sim 2\times$ lower bulk temperatures than expected from a classical virial equilibrium, owing to significant non-thermal kinetic energy that is formally excluded from the definition of $T_\mathrm{vir}$. We derive a modified virial temperature explicitly including non-thermal gas motions that provides a more accurate description of gas temperatures for simulated halos in virial equilibrium. Strong bursts of stellar feedback drive the simulated FOGGIE halos out of virial equilibrium, but the halo gas cannot be accurately described by the standard virial temperature even when in virial equilibrium. Compared to the standard virial temperature, the cooler modified virial temperature implies other effects on halo gas: (i) the thermal gas pressure is lower, (ii) radiative cooling is more efficient, (iii) O VI absorbing gas that traces the virial temperature may be prevalent in halos of a higher mass than expected, (iv) gas mass estimates from X-ray surface brightness profiles may be incorrect, and (v) turbulent motions make an important contribution to the energy balance of a galaxy halo.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Magnetized Decaying Turbulence in the Weakly Compressible Taylor-Green Vortex

Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence affects both terrestrial and astrophysical plasmas. The properties of magnetized turbulence must be better understood to more accurately characterize these systems. This work presents ideal MHD simulations of the compressible Taylor-Green vortex under a range of initial sub-sonic Mach numbers and magnetic field strengths. We find that regardless of the initial field strength, the magnetic energy becomes dominant over the kinetic energy on all scales after at most several dynamical times. The spectral indices of the kinetic and magnetic energy spectra become shallower than $k^{-5/3}$ over time and generally fluctuate. Using a shell-to-shell energy transfer analysis framework, we find that the magnetic fields facilitate a significant amount of the energy flux and that the kinetic energy cascade is suppressed. Moreover, we observe nonlocal energy transfer from the large scale kinetic energy to intermediate and small scale magnetic energy via magnetic tension. We conclude that even in intermittently or singularly driven weakly magnetized systems, the dynamical effects of magnetic fields cannot be neglected.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2021

External Enrichment of Minihalos by the First Supernovae

Recent high-resolution simulations of early structure formation have shown that externally enriched halos may form some of the first metal enriched stars. This study utilizes a 1 comoving Mpc$^3$ high-resolution simulation to study the enrichment process of metal-enriched halos down to $z=9.3$. Our simulation uniquely tracks the metals ejected from Population III stars, and we use this information to identify the origin of metals within metal-enriched halos. These halos show a wide range of metallicities, but we find that the source of metals for $\gtrsim$ 50\% of metal-enriched halos is supernova explosions of Population III stars occuring outside their virial radii. The results presented here indicate that external enrichment by metal-free stars dominates the enrichment process of halos with virial mass below $10^{6}\,M_\odot$ down to $z=9.3$. Despite the prevalence of external enrichment in low mass halos, Pop II stars forming due to external enrichment are rare because of the small contribution of low-mass halos to the global star formation rate combined with low metallicities towards the center of these halos resulting from metal ejecta from external sources mixing from the outside-in. The enriched stars that do form through this process have absolute metallicities below $10^{-3}\,Z_\odot$. We also find that the fraction of externally enriched halos increases with time, $\sim 90\%$ of halos that are externally enriched have $M_\mathrm{vir} < 10^6\,M_\odot$, and that pair-instability supernovae contribute the most to the enrichment of the IGM as a whole and are thus are the predominant supernova type contributing to the external enrichment of halos.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

The Formation of Very Massive Stars in Early Galaxies and Implications for Intermediate Mass Black Holes

We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo. The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation. The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a combination of dynamical heating from mergers and a mild ($J_{\rm LW} \sim 2 - 10 \ J_{21}$(z)) Lyman-Werner (LW) background. We find that more than 20 very massive stars form with stellar masses greater than 1000 M$_{\odot}$. The most massive star has a stellar mass of over 6000 M$_{\odot}$. However, accretion onto all stars declines significantly after the first $\sim$ 100 kyr of evolution as the surrounding material is accreted and the turbulent nature of the gas causes the stars to move to lower density regions. We post-process the impact of ionising radiation from the stars and find that ionising radiation is not a limiting factor when considering SMS formation and growth. Rather the birth environments are highly turbulent and a steady accretion flow is not maintained within the timescale (2 Myr) of our simulations. As the massive stars end their lives as direct collapse black holes this will seed these embryonic haloes with a population of black holes with masses between approximately 300 M$_{\odot}$ and 10,000 M$_{\odot}$. Afterwards they may sink to the centre of the haloes, eventually coalescing to form larger intermediate mass black holes whose in-situ mergers will be detectable by LISA.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

As a matter of tension -- kinetic energy spectra in MHD turbulence

Magnetized turbulence is ubiquitous in many astrophysical and terrestrial systems but no complete, uncontested theory even in the simplest form, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), exists. Many theories and phenomenologies focus on the joint (kinetic and magnetic) energy fluxes and spectra. We highlight the importance of treating kinetic and magnetic energies separately to shed light on MHD turbulence dynamics. We conduct an implicit large eddy simulation of subsonic, super-Alfvénic MHD turbulence and analyze the scale-wise energy transfer over time. Our key finding is that the kinetic energy spectrum develops a scaling of approximately $k^{-4/3}$ in the stationary regime as the kinetic energy cascade is suppressed by magnetic tension. This motivates a reevaluation of existing MHD turbulence theories with respect to a more differentiated modeling of the energy fluxes.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Massive Star Formation in Metal-Enriched Haloes at High Redshift

The formation of supermassive stars has generally been studied under the assumption of rapid accretion of pristine metal-free gas. Recently it was found, however, that gas enriched to metallicities up to $Z \sim 10^{-3}$ Z$_{\odot}$ can also facilitate supermassive star formation, as long as the total mass infall rate onto the protostar remains sufficiently high. We extend the analysis further by examining how the abundance of supermassive star candidate haloes would be affected if all haloes with super-critical infall rates, regardless of metallicity were included. We investigate this scenario by identifying all atomic cooling haloes in the Renaissance simulations with central mass infall rates exceeding a fixed threshold. We find that among these haloes with central mass infall rates above 0.1 M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$ approximately two-thirds of these haloes have metallicities of $Z > 10^{-3}$ Z$_{\odot}$. If metal mixing within these haloes is inefficient early in their assembly and pockets of metal-poor gas can remain then the number of haloes hosting supermassive stars can be increased by at least a factor of four. Additionally the centres of these high infall-rate haloes provide ideal environments in which to grow pre-existing black holes. Further research into the (supermassive) star formation dynamics of rapidly collapsing haloes, with inhomogeneous metal distributions, is required to gain more insight into both supermassive star formation in early galaxies as well as early black hole growth.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

K-Athena: a performance portable structured grid finite volume magnetohydrodynamics code

Large scale simulations are a key pillar of modern research and require ever-increasing computational resources. Different novel manycore architectures have emerged in recent years on the way towards the exascale era. Performance portability is required to prevent repeated non-trivial refactoring of a code for different architectures. We combine Athena++, an existing magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) CPU code, with Kokkos, a performance portable on-node parallel programming paradigm, into K-Athena to allow efficient simulations on multiple architectures using a single codebase. We present profiling and scaling results for different platforms including Intel Skylake CPUs, Intel Xeon Phis, and NVIDIA GPUs. K-Athena achieves $>10^8$ cell-updates/s on a single V100 GPU for second-order double precision MHD calculations, and a speedup of 30 on up to 24,576 GPUs on Summit (compared to 172,032 CPU cores), reaching $1.94\times10^{12}$ total cell-updates/s at 76% parallel efficiency. Using a roofline analysis we demonstrate that the overall performance is currently limited by DRAM bandwidth and calculate a performance portability metric of 62.8%. Finally, we present the implementation strategies used and the challenges encountered in maximizing performance. This will provide other research groups with a straightforward approach to prepare their own codes for the exascale era. K-Athena is available at https://gitlab.com/pgrete/kathena .

cs.DC↗

arXiv2020

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo (FOGGIE). III. The Mocky Way: Investigating Biases in Observing the Milky Way's Circumgalactic Medium

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of the Milky Way is mostly obscured by nearby gas in position-velocity space because we reside inside the Galaxy. Substantial biases exist in most studies on the Milky Way's CGM that focus on easier-to-detect high-velocity gas. With mock observations on a Milky-Way analog from the FOGGIE simulation, we investigate four observational biases related to the Milky Way's CGM. First, QSO absorption-line studies probe a limited amount of the CGM mass: only 35% of the mass is at high Galactic latitudes $|b|>20$ degrees, of which only half is moving at $|v_{\rm LSR}|\gtrsim100$ km s$^{-1}$. Second, the inflow rate ($\dot{M}$) of the cold gas observable in HI 21cm is reduced by a factor of $\sim10$ as we switch from the local standard of rest to the galaxy's rest frame; meanwhile $\dot{M}$ of the cool and warm gas does not change significantly. Third, OVI and NV are promising ions to probe the Milky Way's outer CGM ($r\gtrsim$15 kpc), but CIV may be less sensitive. Lastly, the scatter in ion column density is a factor of 2 higher if the CGM is observed from inside-out than from external views because of the gas radial density profile. Our work highlights that observations of the Milky Way's CGM, especially those using HI 21cm and QSO absorption lines, are highly biased. We demonstrate that these biases can be quantified and calibrated through synthetic observations with simulated Milky-Way analogs.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE). IV. The Stochasticity of Ram Pressure Stripping in Galactic Halos

We study ram pressure stripping in simulated Milky Way-like halos at z>=2 from the Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies In Enzo (FOGGIE) project. These simulations reach exquisite resolution in their circumgalactic medium (CGM) gas owing to FOGGIE's novel refinement scheme. The CGM of each halo spans a wide dynamic range in density and velocity over its volume---roughly 6 dex and 1000 km/s, respectively---translating into a 5 dex range in ram pressure imparted to interacting satellites. The ram pressure profiles of the simulated CGM are highly stochastic, owing to kpc-scale variations of the density and velocity fields of the CGM gas. As a result, the efficacy of ram pressure stripping depends strongly on the specific path a satellite takes through the CGM. The ram-pressure history of a single satellite is generally unpredictable and not well correlated with its approach vector with respect to the host galaxy. The cumulative impact of ram pressure on the simulated satellites is dominated by only a few short strong impulses---on average, 90% of the total surface momentum gained through ram pressure is imparted in 20% or less of the total orbital time. These results reveal an erratic mode of ram pressure stripping in Milky-Way like halos at high redshift---one that is not captured by a smooth spherically-averaged model of the circumgalactic medium.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Cool-Core Cycles and Phoenix

Recent observations show that the star formation rate (SFR) in the {\it Phoenix} cluster's central galaxy is $\sim 500$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$. Even though {\it Phoenix} is a massive cluster ($M_{200} \approx 2.0\times 10^{15}$ M$_\odot$; $z\approx 0.6$) such a high central SFR is not expected in a scenario in which feedback from an active galactic nucleus (AGN) maintains the intracluster medium (ICM) in a state of rough thermal balance. It has been argued that either AGN feedback saturates in very massive clusters or the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) is too small to produce enough kinetic feedback and hence is unable to quench the catastrophic cooling. In this work, we present an alternate scenario wherein intense short-lived cooling and star formation phases followed by strong AGN outbursts are part of the AGN feedback loop. Using results from a 3D hydrodynamic simulation of a standard cool-core cluster ($M_{200}\sim 7\times10^{14}$ M$_\odot$; $z=0$), scaled to account for differences in mass and redshift, we argue that {\it Phoenix} is at the end of a cooling phase in which an AGN outburst has begun but has not yet arrested core cooling. This state of high cooling rate and star formation is expected to last for $\lesssim$ 100 Myr in {\it Phoenix}.

astro-ph.GA↗