Abstract

Regions of disc galaxies with widespread star formation tend to be both gravitationally unstable and self-shielded against ionizing radiation, whereas extended outer discs with little or no star formation tend to be stable and unshielded on average. We explore what drives the transition between these two regimes, specifically whether discs first meet the conditions for self-shielding (parametrized by dust optical depth, τ) or gravitational instability (parametrized by a modified version of Toomre's instability parameters, Qthermal, which quantifies the stability of a gas disc that is thermally supported at T = 104 K). We first introduce a new metric formed by the product of these quantities, Qthermalτ, which indicates whether the conditions for disc instability or self-shielding are easier to meet in a given region of a galaxy, and we discuss how Qthermalτ can be constrained even in the absence of direct gas information. We then analyse a sample of 13 galaxies with resolved gas measurements and find that on average galaxies will reach the threshold for disc instabilities (Qthermal < 1) before reaching the threshold for self-shielding (τ > 1). Using integral field spectroscopic observations of a sample of 236 galaxies from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey, we find that the value of Qthermalτ in star-forming discs is consistent with similar behaviour. These results support a scenario where disc fragmentation and collapse occurs before self-shielding, suggesting that gravitational instabilities are the primary condition for widespread star formation in galaxy discs. Our results support similar conclusions based on recent galaxy simulations.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-13-2017

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, v. 474, issue 2, p. 2323-2333.

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2017 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

The copyright holders have granted the permission for posting the article here.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2903

Funding Information

MB acknowledges NSF-AST-1517006. A-MW acknowledges support of a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. DB acknowledges support from RSF grant RSCF-14-50-00043. MEO was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1144469. Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the US Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS-IV acknowledges support and resources from the centre for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah. The SDSS web site is www.sdss.org.

Download

Share

COinS