Damped Lyman Alpha Systems in Galaxy Formation Simulations

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dc.creatorPontzen, Andrew
dc.creatorGovernato, Fabio
dc.creatorPettini, Max
dc.creatorBooth, C. M.
dc.creatorStinson, Greg
dc.creatorWadsley, James
dc.creatorBrooks, Alyson
dc.creatorQuinn, Thomas
dc.creatorHaehnelt, Martin
dc.date2008-04-29
dc.date2008-10-17
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T10:10:31Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T10:10:31Z
dc.descriptionWe investigate the population of z=3 damped Lyman alpha absorbers (DLAs) in a recent series of high resolution galaxy formation simulations. The simulations are of interest because they form at z=0 some of the most realistic disk galaxies to date. No free parameters are available in our study: these have been fixed by physical and z=0 observational constraints, and thus our study provides a genuine consistency test. The precise role of DLAs in galaxy formation remains in debate, but they provide a number of strong constraints on the nature of our simulated bound systems at z=3 because of their coupled information on neutral H I densities, kinematics, metallicity and estimates of star formation activity. Our results, without any parameter-tuning, closely match the observed incidence rate and column density distributions of DLAs. Our simulations are the first to reproduce the distribution of metallicities (with a median of Z_{DLA} = Z_{solar}/20) without invoking observationally unsupported mechanisms such as dust biasing. This is especially encouraging given that these simulations have previously been shown to have a realistic 0<z<2 stellar mass-metallicity relation. Additionally, we see a strong positive correlation between sightline metallicity and low-ion velocity width, the normalization and slope of which comes close to matching recent observational results. However, we somewhat underestimate the number of observed high velocity width systems; the severity of this disagreement is comparable to other recent DLA focused studies. By z=0 the majority of the z=3 neutral gas forming the DLAs has been converted into stars, in agreement with rough physical expectations. [Abridged]
dc.description24 pages, 18 figures, MNRAS in press. Minor update with a few added details and typographical/grammatical fixes. Movie at http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~app26/
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0804.4474
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0804.4474
dc.identifierdoi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13782.x
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/171620
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleDamped Lyman Alpha Systems in Galaxy Formation Simulations
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