Unveiling the role of galactic rotation on star formation
Author
dc.contributor.author
Utreras Contreras, José
Author
dc.contributor.author
Becerra, Fernando
Author
dc.contributor.author
Escala Astorquiza, Andrés
Admission date
dc.date.accessioned
2017-01-03T20:33:05Z
Available date
dc.date.available
2017-01-03T20:33:05Z
Publication date
dc.date.issued
2016-11-10
Cita de ítem
dc.identifier.citation
The Astrophysical Journal, 833:13 (18pp), 2016 December 10
es_ES
Identifier
dc.identifier.other
10.3847/0004-637X/833/1/13
Identifier
dc.identifier.uri
https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/142243
Abstract
dc.description.abstract
We study the star formation process at galactic scales and the role of rotation through numerical simulations of spiral and starburst galaxies using the adaptive mesh refinement code Enzo. We focus on the study of three integrated star formation laws found in the literature: the Kennicutt–Schmidt (KS) and Silk–Elmegreen (SE) laws, and the dimensionally homogeneous equation proposed by Escala Sµ S SFR G L gas 1.5 . We show that using the last we take into account the effects of the integration along the line of sight and find a unique regime of star formation
for both types of galaxies, suppressing the observed bi-modality of the KS law. We find that the efficiencies displayed by our simulations are anti-correlated with the angular velocity of the disk Ω for the three laws studied in this work. Finally, we show that the dimensionless efficiency of star formation is well represented by an exponentially decreasing function of -1.9Wtff
ini, where tff ini is the initial free-fall time. This leads to a unique galactic
star formation relation which reduces the scatter of the bi-modal KS, SE, and Escala relations by 43%, 43%, and 35%, respectively.