Formation of globular cluster candidates in merging proto-galaxies at high redshift: a view from the FIRE cosmological simulations
Creators
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1.
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
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Stanford University
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3.
California Institute of Technology
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Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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Carnegie Observatories
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University of California, Davis
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Northwestern University
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University of California, San Diego
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Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
Abstract
Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation of merging proto-galaxies at high redshift from the FIRE project, with explicit treatments of star formation and stellar feedback in the interstellar medium, we investigate the formation of star clusters and examine one of the formation hypotheses of present-day metal-poor globular clusters. We find that frequent mergers in high-redshift proto-galaxies could provide a fertile environment to produce long-lasting bound star clusters. The violent merger event disturbs the gravitational potential and pushes a large gas mass of ≳ 10^(5–6) M⊙ collectively to high density, at which point it rapidly turns into stars before stellar feedback can stop star formation. The high dynamic range of the reported simulation is critical in realizing such dense star-forming clouds with a small dynamical time-scale, t_(ff)≲ 3 Myr, shorter than most stellar feedback time-scales. Our simulation then allows us to trace how clusters could become virialized and tightly bound to survive for up to ∼420 Myr till the end of the simulation. Because the cluster's tightly bound core was formed in one short burst, and the nearby older stars originally grouped with the cluster tend to be preferentially removed, at the end of the simulation the cluster has a small age spread.
Additional Information
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted 2017 November 17. Received 2017 November 17; in original form 2017 April 10. Published: 23 November 2017. The authors thank Tom Abel, Nathan Bastian, Diederik Kruijssen, Joel Primack, and Eros Vanzella for useful discussions and insightful comments during the progress of this study. Ji-hoon Kim acknowledges support from NASA through an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant PF4-150147 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-03060. He also acknowledges support from the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics at Caltech. He thanks for the support from the computational team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, from Shawfeng Dong at the University of California Santa Cruz, and from Chris Mach at Caltech during the usage of the clusters for simulation analyses. The computing time used for the presented simulations was provided by Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) allocations TG-AST120025, TG-AST130039, TG-AST140023, and TG-AST140064. XSEDE is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant ACI-1053575. Philip Hopkins acknowledges support by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant 776 to the Caltech Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics, by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through Sloan Research Fellowship BR2014-022, by the NSF through grant AST-1411920 and CAREER grant 1455342, and by NASA through the ATP grant NNX14AH35G. The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. Andrew Wetzel acknowledges support by a Caltech-Carnegie Fellowship, in part through the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics at Caltech, and by NASA through grant HST-GO-14734 from STScI. Claude-André Faucher-Giguère acknowledges support by the NSF through grants AST-1412836 and AST-1517491, by NASA through grant NNX15AB22G, and by STScI through grants HST-AR-14293.001-A and HST-GO-14268.022-A. Dušan Kereš acknowledges support by the NSF through grant AST-1412153, and by the Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Shea Garrison-Kimmel acknowledges support from NASA through an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant PF5-160136. The publicly available YT code used in the analysis of this work is the product of collaborative efforts by many independent scientists from numerous institutions around the world. Their commitment to open science has helped make this work possible.Attached Files
Published - stx2994.pdf
Accepted Version - 1704.02988.pdf
Files
1704.02988.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 84909
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180221-135659103
Related works
- Describes
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02988 (URL)
Funding
- NASA Einstein Fellowship
- PF4-150147
- NASA
- NAS8-03060
- NSF
- ACI-1053575
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- 776
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- BR2014-022
- NSF
- AST-1411920
- NSF
- AST-1455342
- NASA
- NNX14AH35G
- Simons Foundation
- Caltech-Carnegie Fellowship
- Caltech Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics
- NASA
- HST-GO-14734
- NSF
- AST-1412836
- NSF
- AST-1517491
- NASA
- NNX15AB22G
- NASA
- HST-AR-14293.001-A
- NASA
- HST-GO-14268.022-A
- NSF
- AST-1412153
- Research Corporation for Science Advancement
- NASA Einstein Fellowship
- PF5-160136
Dates
- Created
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2018-02-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- TAPIR , Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics , Astronomy Department