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Kentaro Nagamine

Publications and source records attributed to Kentaro Nagamine.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

Populating H$_2$ and CO in galaxy simulation with dust evolution

There are two major theoretical issues for the star formation law (the relation between the surface densities of molecular gas and star formation rate on a galaxy scale): (i) At low metallicity, it is not obvious that star-forming regions are rich in H$_2$ because the H$_2$ formation rate depends on the dust abundance; and (ii) whether or not CO really traces H$_2$ is uncertain, especially at low metallicity. To clarify these issues, we use a hydrodynamic simulation of an isolated disc galaxy with a spatial resolution of a few tens parsecs. The evolution of dust abundance and grain size distribution is treated consistently with the metal enrichment and the physical state of the interstellar medium. We compute the H$_2$ and CO abundances using a subgrid post-processing model based on the dust abundance and the dissociating radiation field calculated in the simulation. We find that when the metallicity is $\lesssim 0.4$ Z$_\odot$ ($t<1$ Gyr), H$_2$ is not a good tracer of star formation rate because H$_2$-rich regions are limited to dense compact regions. At $Z\gtrsim 0.8$ Z$_\odot$, a tight star formation law is established for both H$_2$ and CO. At old ($t \sim 10$ Gyr) ages, we also find that adopting the so-called MRN grain size distribution with an appropriate dust-to-metal ratio over the entire disc gives reasonable estimates for the H$_2$ and CO abundances. For CO, improving the spatial resolution of the simulation is important while the H$_2$ abundance is not sensitive to sub-resolution structures at $Z\gtrsim 0.4$ Z$_\odot$.

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Gas clump formation via thermal instability in high-redshift dwarf galaxy mergers

Star formation in high-redshift dwarf galaxies is a key to understand early galaxy evolution in the early Universe. Using the three-dimensional hydrodynamics code GIZMO, we study the formation mechanism of cold, high-density gas clouds in interacting dwarf galaxies with halo masses of $\sim 3 \times 10^{7}~M_{\odot}$, which are likely to be the formation sites of early star clusters. Our simulations can resolve both the structure of interstellar medium on small scales of $\lesssim 0.1$ pc and the galactic disk simultaneously. We find that the cold gas clouds form in the post-shock region via thermal instability due to metal-line cooling, when the cooling time is shorter than the galactic dynamical time. The mass function of cold clouds shows almost a power-law initially with an upper limit of thermally unstable scale. We find that some clouds merge into more massive ones with $\gtrsim 10^{4}~M_{\odot}$ within $\sim 2~{\rm Myr}$. Only the massive cold clouds with $\gtrsim 10^{3}~M_{\odot}$ can keep collapsing due to gravitational instability, resulting in the formation of star clusters. In addition, we investigate the dependence of cloud mass function on metallicity and ${\rm H_{2}}$ abundance, and show that the cases with low metallicities ($\lesssim 10^{-2}~Z_{\odot}$) or high ${\rm H_{2}}$ abundance ($\gtrsim 10^{-3}$) cannot form massive cold clouds with $\gtrsim 10^{3}~M_{\odot}$.

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Growth of First Galaxies: Impacts of Star Formation and Stellar Feedback

We present the results of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with zoom-in initial conditions, and investigate the formation of the first galaxies and their evolution towards observable galaxies at $z \sim 6$. We focus on three different galaxies which end up in halos with masses $M_{h} = 2.4 \times10^{10}~h^{-1}\; M_{\odot}$ (Halo-10), $1.6 \times10^{11}~h^{-1}\; M_{\odot}$ (Halo-11) and $0.7 \times10^{12}~h^{-1} M_{\odot}$ (Halo-12) at z=6. Our simulations also probe impacts of different sub-grid assumptions, i.e., SF efficiency and cosmic reionization, on SF histories in the first galaxies. We find that star formation occurs intermittently due to supernova (SN) feedback at z > 10, and then it proceeds more smoothly as the halo mass grows at lower redshifts. Galactic disks are destroyed due to SN feedback, while galaxies in simulations with no-feedback or lower SF efficiency models can sustain galactic disk for long periods > 10 Myr. The expulsion of gas at the galactic center also affects the inner dark matter density profile. However, SN feedback does not seem to keep the shallow profile of dark matter for a long period. Our simulated galaxies in Halo-11 and Halo-12 reproduce the star formation rates (SFR) and stellar masses of observed Lyman-$α$ emitters (LAEs) at z = 7-8 fairly well given observational uncertainties. In addition, we investigate the effect of UV background radiation on star formation as an external feedback source, and find that earlier reionization extends the quenching time of star formation due to photo-ionization heating, but does not affect the stellar mass at z=6.

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Evolution of dust extinction curves in galaxy simulation

To understand the evolution of extinction curve, we calculate the dust evolution in a galaxy using smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations incorporating stellar dust production, dust destruction in supernova shocks, grain growth by accretion and coagulation, and grain disruption by shattering. The dust species are separated into carbonaceous dust and silicate. The evolution of grain size distribution is considered by dividing grain population into large and small gains, which allows us to estimate extinction curves. We examine the dependence of extinction curves on the position, gas density, and metallicity in the galaxy, and find that extinction curves are flat at $t \lesssim 0.3$ Gyr because stellar dust production dominates the total dust abundance. The 2175 Å bump and far-ultraviolet (FUV) rise become prominent after dust growth by accretion. At $t \gtrsim 3$ Gyr, shattering works efficiently in the outer disc and low density regions, so extinction curves show a very strong 2175 Å bump and steep FUV rise. The extinction curves at $t\gtrsim 3$ Gyr are consistent with the Milky Way extinction curve, which implies that we successfully included the necessary dust processes in the model. The outer disc component caused by stellar feedback has an extinction curves with a weaker 2175 Å bump and flatter FUV slope. The strong contribution of carbonaceous dust tends to underproduce the FUV rise in the Small Magellanic Cloud extinction curve, which supports selective loss of small carbonaceous dust in the galaxy. The snapshot at young ages also explain the extinction curves in high-redshift quasars.

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Galaxy Simulation with Dust Formation and Destruction

We perform smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of an isolated galaxy with a new treatment for dust formation and destruction. To this aim, we treat dust and metal production self-consistently with star formation and supernova feedback. For dust, we consider a simplified model of grain size distribution by representing the entire range of grain sizes with large and small grains. We include dust production in stellar ejecta, dust destruction by supernova (SN) shocks, grain growth by accretion and coagulation, and grain disruption by shattering. We find that the assumption of fixed dust-to-metal mass ratio becomes no longer valid when the galaxy is older than 0.2 Gyr, at which point the grain growth by accretion starts to contribute to the nonlinear rise of dust-to-gas ratio. As expected in our previous one-zone model, shattering triggers grain growth by accretion since it increases the total surface area of grains. Coagulation becomes significant when the galaxy age is greater than $\sim$ 1 Gyr: at this epoch the abundance of small grains becomes high enough to raise the coagulation rate of small grains. We further compare the radial profiles of dust-to-gas ratio $(\mathcal{D})$ and dust-to-metal ratio $(\mathcal{D}/Z)$ (i.e., depletion) at various ages with observational data. We find that our simulations broadly reproduce the radial gradients of dust-to-gas ratio and depletion. In the early epoch ($\lesssim 0.3$ Gyr), the radial gradient of $\mathcal{D}$ follows the metallicity gradient with $\mathcal{D}/Z$ determined by the dust condensation efficiency in stellar ejecta, while the $\mathcal{D}$ gradient is steeper than the $Z$ gradient at the later epochs because of grain growth by accretion. The framework developed in this paper is applicable to any SPH-based galaxy evolution simulations including cosmological ones.

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Evolution of binary seeds in collapsing protostellar gas clouds

We perform three dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of gas accretion onto the seeds of binary stars to investigate their short-term evolution. Our simulation setup is more realistic compared to the previous works by taking into account of dynamically evolving envelope with non-uniform distribution of gas density and angular momentum of accreting flow. Our initial condition includes a seed binary and a surrounding gas envelope, modelling the phase of core collapse of gas cloud when the fragmentation has already occurred. We assume that the seed binary has no eccentricity and no growth by gas accretion. The envelope is assumed to be an isothermal gas with no self-gravity. We run multiple simulations with different values of initial mass ratio $q_0$ (the ratio of secondary over primary mass) and gas temperature, and find a critical value of $q_{\rm c} = 0.25$ which distinguishes the later evolution of mass ratio $q$ as a function of time. If $q_0$ >~ $q_{\rm c}$, the secondary seed grows faster and $q$ increases monotonically towards unity. If $q_0$ <~ $q_{\rm c}$, on the other hand, the primary seed grows faster and $q$ is lower than $q_0$ at the end of the simulation. Based on our numerical results, we analytically calculate the long-term evolution of the seed binary including the growth of binary by gas accretion. We find that the seed binary with $q_0$ >~ $q_{\rm c}$ evolves towards an equal-mass binary star, and that with $q_0$ <~ $q_{\rm c}$ evolves to a binary with an extreme value of $q$. Binary separation is a monotonically increasing function of time for any $q_0$, suggesting that the binary growth by accretion does not lead to the formation of close binaries.

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Direct Collapse to Supermassive Black Hole Seeds: Comparing the AMR and SPH Approaches

We provide detailed comparison between the AMR code Enzo-2.4 and the SPH/N- body code GADGET-3 in the context of isolated or cosmological direct baryonic collapse within dark matter (DM) halos to form supermassive black holes. Gas flow is examined by following evolution of basic parameters of accretion flows. Both codes show an overall agreement in the general features of the collapse, however, many subtle differences exist. For isolated models, the codes increase their spatial and mass resolutions at different pace, which leads to substantially earlier collapse in SPH than in AMR cases due to higher gravitational resolution in GADGET-3. In cosmological runs, the AMR develops a slightly higher baryonic resolution than SPH during halo growth via cold accretion permeated by mergers. Still, both codes agree in the buildup of DM and baryonic structures. However, with the onset of collapse, this difference in mass and spatial resolution is amplified, so evolution of SPH models begins to lag behind. Such a delay can have effect on formation/destruction rate of H2 due to UV background, and on basic properties of host halos. Finally, isolated non-cosmological models in spinning halos, with spin parameter λ ~ 0.01 - 0.07, show delayed collapse for greater λ, but pace of this increase is faster for AMR. Within our simulation setup, GADGET-3 requires significantly larger computational resources than Enzo- 2.4 during collapse, and needs similar resources, during the pre-collapse, cosmological structure formation phase. Yet it benefits from substantially higher gravitational force and hydrodynamic resolutions, except at the end of collapse.

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Connecting the Dots: Tracking Galaxy Evolution Using Constant Cumulative Number Density at 3<z<7

Using the cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamical code GADGET-3 we make a realistic assessment of the technique of using constant cumulative number density as a tracer of galaxy evolution at high redshift. We find that over a redshift range of $3\leq z \leq7$ one can on average track the growth of the stellar mass of a population of galaxies selected from the same cumulative number density bin to within $\sim 0.20$ dex. Over the stellar mass range we probe ($10^{10.39}\leq M_s/M_\odot \leq 10^{10.75}$ at $z =$ 3 and $10^{8.48}\leq M_s/M_\odot \leq 10^{9.55}$ at $z =$ 7) one can reduce this bias by selecting galaxies based on an evolving cumulative number density. We find the cumulative number density evolution exhibits a trend towards higher values which can be quantified by simple linear formulations going as $-0.10Δz$ for descendants and $0.12Δz$ for progenitors. Utilizing such an evolving cumulative number density increases the accuracy of descendant/progenitor tracking by a factor of $\sim2$. This result is in excellent agreement, within $0.10$ dex, with abundance matching results over the same redshift range. However, we find that our more realistic cosmological hydrodynamic simulations produce a much larger scatter in descendant/progenitor stellar masses than previous studies, particularly when tracking progenitors. This large scatter makes the application of either the constant cumulative number density or evolving cumulative number density technique limited to average stellar masses of populations only, as the diverse mass assembly histories caused by stochastic physical processes such as gas accretion, mergers, and star formation of individual galaxies will lead to a larger scatter in other physical properties such as metallicity and star-formation rate.

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Supermassive Black Hole Seed Formation at High Redshifts: Long-Term Evolution of the Direct Collapse

We use cosmological adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code Enzo zoom-in simulations to study the long term evolution of the collapsing gas within dark matter (DM) halos at high redshifts. This direct collapse process is a leading candidate for rapid formation of supermassive black hole (SMBH) seeds at high z. To circumvent the Courant condition at small radii, we have used the sink particle method, and focus on the evolution on scales ~0.01-10 pc. The collapse proceeds in two stages, with the secondary runaway happening within the central 10 pc, and with no detected fragmentation. The sink particles form when the collapsing gas requires additional refinement of the grid size at the highest refinement level. Their mass never exceeds ~10^3 Mo, with the sole exception of the central seed which grows dramatically to ~ 2 x 10^6 Mo in ~2 Myr, confirming the feasibility of this path to the SMBH. The time variability of angular momentum axis in the accreted gas results in the formation of two misaligned disks --- a small inner disk, and a more massive, outer disk which is inclined by ~45^o to the inner disk. The self-gravity of these disks is heavily diluted --- both disks lie within the Roche limit of the central seed. While the inner disk is geometrically thin and weakly asymmetric, the outer disk flares due to turbulent motions as a result of the massive inflow along a pair of penetrating filaments. The geometry of inflow via filaments determines the dominant and secondary Fourier modes in this disk --- these modes have a non-self-gravitational origin. We do not confirm that m=1 is a principal mode that drives the inflow in the presence of a central massive object. While the positions of the disks depend on the scale chosen to break the self-similar collapse, the overall configuration appears to be generic, and is expected to form when the central seed becomes sufficiently massive.

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The rise and fall of a challenger: the Bullet Cluster in $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter simulations

The Bullet Cluster has provided some of the best evidence for the $Λ$ cold dark matter ($Λ\rm{CDM}$) model via direct empirical proof of the existence of collisionless dark matter, while posing a serious challenge owing to the unusually high inferred pairwise velocities of its progenitor clusters. Here we investigate the probability of finding such a high-velocity pair in large-volume N-body simulations, particularly focusing on differences between halo finding algorithms. We find that algorithms that do not account for the kinematics of infalling groups yield vastly different statistics and probabilities. When employing the ROCKSTAR halo finder that considers particle velocities, we find numerous Bullet-like pair candidates that closely match not only the high pairwise velocity, but also the mass, mass ratio, separation distance, and collision angle of the initial conditions that have been shown to produce the Bullet Cluster in non-cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. The probability of finding a high pairwise velocity pair among haloes with $M_{\rm halo}\geq10^{14} M_{\odot}$ is $4.6\times 10^{-4}$ using ROCKSTAR, while it is $\approx 34\times$ lower using a friends-of-friends (FOF) based approach as in previous studies. This is because the typical spatial extent of Bullet progenitors is such that FOF tends to group them into a single halo despite clearly distinct kinematics. Further requiring an appropriately high average mass among the two progenitors, we find the comoving number density of potential Bullet-like candidates to be on the order of $\approx10^{-10} \,{\rm Mpc}^{-3}$. Our findings suggest that $Λ\rm{CDM}$ straightforwardly produces massive, high relative velocity halo pairs analogous to Bullet Cluster progenitors, and hence the Bullet Cluster does not present a challenge to the $Λ\rm{CDM}$ model.

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Observational Properties of Simulated Galaxies in Overdense and Average Regions at High Redshifts z= 6-12

We use high-resolution zoom-in cosmological simulations of galaxies of Romano-Diaz et al., post-processing them with a panchromatic three-dimensional radiation transfer code to obtain the galaxy UV luminosity function (LF) at z ~ 6-12. The galaxies are followed in a rare, heavily overdense region within a ~ 5-sigma density peak, which can host high-z quasars, and in an average density region, down to the stellar mass of M_star ~ 4* 10^7 Msun. We find that the overdense regions evolve at a substantially accelerated pace --- the most massive galaxy has grown to M_star ~ 8.4*10^10 Msun by z = 6.3, contains dust of M_dust~ 4.1*10^8 Msun, and is associated with a very high star formation rate, SFR ~ 745 Msun/yr.The attained SFR-M_star correlation results in the specific SFR slowly increasing with M_star. Most of the UV radiation in massive galaxies is absorbed by the dust, its escape fraction f_esc is low, increasing slowly with time. Galaxies in the average region have less dust, and agree with the observed UV LF. The LF of the overdense region is substantially higher, and contains much brighter galaxies. The massive galaxies are bright in the infrared (IR) due to the dust thermal emission, with L_IR~ 3.7*10^12 Lsun at z = 6.3, while L_IR < 10^11 Lsun for the low-mass galaxies. Therefore, ALMA can probe massive galaxies in the overdense region up to z ~ 10 with a reasonable integration time. The UV spectral properties of disky galaxies depend significantly upon the viewing angle.The stellar and dust masses of the most massive galaxy in the overdense region are comparable to those of the sub-millimetre galaxy (SMG) found by Riechers et al. at z = 6.3, while the modelled SFR and the sub-millimetre flux fall slightly below the observed one. Statistical significance of these similarities and differences will only become clear with the upcoming ALMA observations.

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Metallicity Measurements of Gamma-Ray Burst and Supernova Explosion Sites: Lessons from HII regions in M31

We examine how the small-scale ($<$\,kpc) variation of metallicity within a galaxy, which is found in nearby galaxies, affect the observational estimates of metallicity in the explosion sites of transient events such as core-collapse supernovae (CC SNe) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Assuming the same luminosity, metallicity, and spatial distributions of \ion{H}{ii}\ regions (hereafter HIIRs) as observed in M31, we compute the apparent metallicities that we would obtain when the spectrum of a target region is blended with those of surrounding HIIRs within the length scale of typical spatial resolution. When the spatial resolution of spectroscopy is $\lesssim$ 0.5\,kpc, which is typical for the existing studies of CC SN sites, we find that the apparent metallicities reflect the metallicities of target regions, but with significant systematic uncertainties in some cases. When the spatial resolution is $\gtrsim$ 1.0 kpc, regardless of the target regions (which has a wide range of metallicity that spans $\sim$ 0.6 dex for the M31 HIIRs), we always obtain the apparent metallicities similar to the average metallicity of the M31 HIIRs. Given that the apparent metallicities measured with $\gtrsim$\,kpc scale resolution do not necessarily reflect the immediate environment of the stellar explosions, the current observational estimates of high metallicities for some of the long GRB host galaxies do {\em not} rule out the hypothesis that the long GRBs are exclusively born in a low-metallicity environment.

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Dust properties of Lyman break galaxies in cosmological simulations

Recent observations have indicated the existence of dust in high-redshift galaxies, however, the dust properties in them are still unknown. Here we present theoretical constraints on dust properties in Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z=3 by post-processing a cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation with radiative transfer calculations. We calculate the dust extinction in 2800 dark matter halos using the metallicity information of individual gas particles in our simulation. We use only bright galaxies with rest-frame UV magnitude M_1700 < -20 mag, and study the dust size, dust-to-metal mass ratio, and dust composition. From the comparison of calculated color excess between B and V-band (i.e., E(B-V)) and the observations, we constrain the typical dust size, and show that the best-fitting dust grain size is ~ 0.05 micron, which is consistent with the results of theoretical dust models for Type-II supernova. Our simulation with the dust extinction effect can naturally reproduce the observed rest-frame UV luminosity function of LBGs at z=3 without assuming an ad hoc constant extinction value. In addition, in order to reproduce the observed mean E(B-V), we find that the dust-to-metal mass ratio needs to be similar to that of the local galaxies, and that the graphite dust is dominant or at least occupy half of dust mass.

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The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project

We introduce the AGORA project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the LCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of ~100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of 8 galaxies with halo masses M_vir ~= 1e10, 1e11, 1e12, and 1e13 Msun at z=0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes ART, ENZO, and RAMSES. The codes will share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit, and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust - i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The proof-of-concept dark matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z=0 mass of M_vir ~= 1.7e11 Msun by 9 different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.

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Molecular hydrogen regulated star formation in cosmological SPH simulations

It has been shown observationally that star formation (SF) correlates tightly with the presence of molecular hydrogen (H$_2$). Therefore it would be important to investigate its implication on galaxy formation in a cosmological context. In the present work, we track the H$_2$ mass fraction within our cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code GADGET-3 using an equilibrium analytic model by Krumholz et al. This model allows us to regulate the star formation in our simulation by the local abundance of H$_2$ rather than the total cold gas density, and naturally introduce the dependence of star formation on metallicity. We investigate implications of the equilibrium H$_2$-based SF model on galaxy population properties, such as the stellar-to-halo mass ratio (SHMR), baryon fraction, cosmic star formation rate density (SFRD), galaxy specific SFR, galaxy stellar mass functions (GSMF), and Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relationship. The advantage of our work over the previous ones is having a large sample of simulated galaxies in a cosmological volume from high-redshift to $z=0$. We find that low-mass halos with M$_{DM}<10^{10.5}$ M$_\odot$ are less efficient in producing stars in the H$_2$-based SF model at $z\geq6$, which brings the simulations to a better agreement with observational estimates of SHMR and GSMF at the low-mass end. This is particularly evident by a reduction in the number of low-mass galaxies at M$_\star\leq10^{8}$ M$_\odot$ in the GSMF. The overall SFRD is also reduced at high-$z$ in the H$_2$ run, which results in slightly higher SFRD at low-redshift due to more abundant gas available for star formation at later times. This new H$_2$ model is able to reproduce the empirical KS relationship at $z=0$ naturally without the need for setting its normalization by hand, and overall it seems to have more advantages than the previous pressure-based SF model.

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On the Virialization of Disk Winds: Implications for the Black Hole Mass Estimates in AGN

Estimating the mass of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in an active galactic nucleus (AGN) usually relies on the assumption that the broad line region (BLR) is virialized. However, this assumption seems invalid in BLR models that consists of an accretion disk and its wind. The disk is likely Keplerian and therefore virialized. However, the wind material must, beyond a certain point, be dominated by an outward force that is stronger than gravity. Here, we analyze hydrodynamic simulations of four different disk winds: an isothermal wind, a thermal wind from an X-ray heated disk, and two line-driven winds, one with and the other without X-ray heating and cooling. For each model, we check whether gravity governs the flow properties, by computing and analyzing the volume-integrated quantities that appear in the virial theorem: internal, kinetic, and gravitational energies, We find that in the first two models, the winds are non-virialized whereas the two line-driven disk winds are virialized up to a relatively large distance. The line-driven winds are virialized because they accelerate slowly so that the rotational velocity is dominant and the wind base is very dense. For the two virialized winds, the so-called projected virial factor scales with inclination angle as $1/ \sin^2{i}$. Finally, we demonstrate that an outflow from a Keplerian disk becomes unvirialized more slowly when it conserves the gas specific angular momentum -- as in the models considered here, than when it conserves the angular velocity -- as in the so-called magneto-centrifugal winds.

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Impact of H_2-based star formation model on the z>=6 luminosity function and the ionizing photon budget for reionization

We present the results of a numerical study examining the effect of H_2-based star formation (SF) model on the rest-frame UV luminosity function and star formation rate function (SFRF) of z>=6 galaxies, and the implications for reionization. Using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations outfitted with an H_2-SF model, we find good agreement with our previous results (non-H_2 SF model) and observations at Muv<=-18. However at Muv>-18, we find that the LF deviates from both our previous work and current observational extrapolations, producing significantly fewer low-luminosity galaxies and exhibiting additional turnover at the faint end. We constrain the redshift evolution of this turnover point using a modified Schechter function that includes additional terms to quantify the turnover magnitude (Muv^t) and subsequent slope (Beta). We find that Muv^t evolves from Muv^t=-17.33 (at z=8) to -15.38 (z=6), while Beta becomes shallower by ΔBeta=0.22 during the same epoch. This occurs in an Muv range which will be observable by JWST. By integrating the SFRF, we determine that even though H_2-SF model significantly reduces the number density of low luminosity galaxies at Muv>-18, it does not suppress the total SFR density enough to affect the capability of SF to maintain reionization.

astro-ph.CO↗

Effect of radiative transfer on damped Lyman-alpha and Lyman limit systems in cosmological SPH simulations

We study the effect of local stellar radiation and UVB on the physical properties of DLAs and LLSs at z=3 using cosmological SPH simulations. We post-process our simulations with the ART code for radiative transfer of local stellar radiation and UVB. We find that the DLA and LLS cross sections are significantly reduced by the UVB, whereas the local stellar radiation does not affect them very much except in the low-mass halos. This is because clumpy high-density clouds near young star clusters effectively absorb most of the ionizing photons from young stars. We also find that the UVB model with a simple density threshold for self-shielding effect can reproduce the observed column density distribution function of DLAs and LLSs very well, and we validate this model by direct radiative transfer calculations of stellar radiation and UVB with high angular resolution. We show that, with a self-shielding treatment, the DLAs have an extended distribution around star-forming regions typically on ~ 10-30 kpc scales, and LLSs are surrounding DLAs on ~ 30-60 kpc scales. Our simulations suggest that the median properties of DLA host haloes are: Mh = 2.4*10^10 Msun, SFR = 0.3 Msun/yr, M* = 2.4*10^8 Msun, and Z/Zsun = 0.1. About 30 per cent of DLAs are hosted by haloes having SFR = 1 - 20 Msun/yr, which is the typical SFR range for LBGs. More than half of DLAs are hosted by the LBGs that are fainter than the current observational limit. Our results suggest that fractional contribution to LLSs from lower mass haloes is greater than for DLAs. Therefore the median values of LLS host haloes are somewhat lower with Mh = 9.6*10^9 Msun, SFR = 0.06 Msun/yr, M* = 6.5*10^7 Msun and Z/Zsun = 0.08. About 80 per cent of total LLS cross section are hosted by haloes with SFR < 1 Msun/yr, hence most LLSs are associated with low-mass halos with faint LBGs below the current detection limit.

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