Abstract
We investigate the formation of dense stellar clumps in a suite of high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of a massive, star-forming galaxy at z ∼ 2 under the presence of strong quasar winds. Our simulations include multiphase ISM physics from the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project and a novel implementation of hyper-refined accretion disc winds. We show that powerful quasar winds can have a global negative impact on galaxy growth while in the strongest cases triggering the formation of an off-centre clump with stellar mass M* ∼ 107 M, effective radius R1/2 Clump ∼ 20 pc, and surface density * ∼ 104 M pc−2. The clump progenitor gas cloud is originally not star-forming, but strong ram pressure gradients driven by the quasar winds (orders of magnitude stronger than experienced in the absence of winds) lead to rapid compression and subsequent conversion of gas into stars at densities much higher than the average density of star-forming gas. The AGN-triggered star-forming clump reaches SFR ∼ 50 M yr−1 and SFR ∼ 104 M yr−1 kpc−2, converting most of the progenitor gas cloud into stars in ∼2 Myr, significantly faster than its initial free-fall time and with stellar feedback unable to stop star formation. In contrast, the same gas cloud in the absence of quasar winds forms stars over a much longer period of time (∼35 Myr), at lower densities, and losing spatial coherency. The presence of young, ultra-dense, gravitationally bound stellar clumps in recently quenched galaxies could thus indicate local positive feedback acting alongside the strong negative impact of powerful quasar winds, providing a plausible formation scenario for globular clusters.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2795-2809 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
| Volume | 530 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1 2024 |
Funding
We thank the anonymous referee for constructive comments that helped improve the paper. The simulations were run on Flatiron Institute\u2019s research computing facilities (Gordon-Simons, Popeye, and Iron compute clusters), supported by the Simons Foundation. We thank the Scientific Computing Core group at the Flatiron Institute for outstanding support. Additional numerical calculations were run on the Caltech compute cluster \u2018Wheeler,\u2019 allocations FTA-Hopkins supported by the NSF and TACC, and NASA HEC SMD-16-7592, and XSEDE allocation TG-AST160048 supported by NSF grant number ACI-1053575. JMF was supported in part by a NASA CT Space Grant Graduate Fellowship. DAA acknowledges support by NSF grants AST-2009687 and AST-2108944, CXO grant number TM2-23006X, JWST grant number GO-01712.009-A, Simons Foundation Award CCA-1018464, and Cottrell Scholar Award CS-CSA-2023-028 by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. JM is funded by the Hirsch Foundation. CAFG was supported by NSF through grants AST-2108230, AST-2307327, and CAREER award AST-1652522; by NASA through grants 17-ATP17-0067 and 21-ATP21-0036; by STScI through grant number HST-GO-16730.016-A; and by CXO through grant number TM2-23005X. Support for PFH was provided by NSF Research Grants 1911233, 20009234, 2108318, NSF CAREER grant number 1455342, NASA grants 80NSSC18K0562, and HST-AR-15800.
Keywords
- cosmology: theory
- galaxies: evolution
- galaxies: formation
- galaxies: star clusters: general
- quasars: general
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science