articleMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical SocietyDec 15, 2009BRONZE OA

The physics driving the cosmic star formation history

JSJoop SchayeCDClaudio Dalla VecchiaCMC. M. BoothRPRobert P. C. WiersmaTTTom Theuns
Indexed inarxivcrossrefdoaj

Abstract

We investigate the physics driving the cosmic star formation (SF) history using the more than 50 large, cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations that together comprise the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations project. We systematically vary the parameters of the model to determine which physical processes are dominant and which aspects of the model are robust. Generically, we find that SF is limited by the build-up of dark matter haloes at high redshift, reaches a broad maximum at intermediate redshift and then decreases as it is quenched by lower cooling rates in hotter and lower density gas, gas exhaustion and self-regulated feedback from stars and black holes. The higher redshift SF is therefore mostly…

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Authors

10
  • JS
    Joop SchayeCorresponding
  • CD
    Claudio Dalla Vecchia
  • CM
    C. M. Booth
  • RP
    Robert P. C. Wiersma
  • TT
    Tom Theuns

Topics & keywords

Topics
Keywords
  • Star formation
  • Redshift
  • Stars
  • Galaxy
  • Dark matter
  • Black hole (networking)
  • Galaxy formation and evolution
  • COSMIC cancer database
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