Oral Presentation
Magneto-thermo-turbulent star formation in cosmic zoom-in spiral galaxies
Presenter: Sergio Martin (University of Oxford)
An incredibly successful and simple description of star formation on galactic scales is the Kennicutt-Schmidt law which relates the star formation rate to gas density. At smaller scales however, complex local dynamical processes driven by phenomenon such as stellar feedback, turbulence and/or magnetic fields are thought to be necessary to explain star formation.
As numerical simulations are able to resolve unprecedented spatial scales, sub-grid prescriptions need to be adapted to consistently model those physical processes that still remain below the resolution limit. By means of a suite of constrained transport magnetohydrodynamical adaptive mesh refinement high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-like spiral galaxies, we explore how modelling star formation through a local magneto-thermo-turbulent prescription affects the properties of the resulting galaxies. We focus specifically on the role played by magnetism. We find that for most levels of magnetisation, even though the presence of magnetic fields considerably modifies star formation histories, it does not substantially alter the resulting stellar mass. Only at the strongest magnetisations tested, is the stellar mass halved. We also explore how stellar feedback changes the effect of magnetic fields and hence star formation.
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