Description
Understanding the interplay between galactic dynamics, star formation, and stellar feedback is crucial for constructing a comprehensive model of star formation. To explore how the large-scale environment affects local star formation, we simulate an isolated star-forming galaxy and zoom into different regions to characterise how star formation varies in relation to bulk properties.
The galaxy is modelled with the 3D magnetohydrodynamic moving-mesh code AREPO and includes stellar feedback, radiative transfer, non-equilibrium chemistry, a live potential and magnetic fields. Star formation is simulated with a sub-grid module which forms ‘star particles’ which have photoionising and supernova feedback mechanisms.
We improve upon existing zoom-in methods in several ways: by incrementally increasing the resolution of nested regions centred on a point of interest to minimise boundary artifacts, by using a flow-tracing method to track region boundaries for self-consistent evolution within a certain duration, and by assessing the validity of our zoom-in simulations by comparing them to the original large-scale simulation. We apply this zoom-in method to regions in the spiral arms, the inter-arms, the central molecular zone, and the outer galaxy with the aim of revealing systematic variations in star formation properties across these different environments, and linking them to the empirical star formation laws.
This framework provides a more self-consistent method for multi-scale galaxy simulations, offering a better characterisation of the role of the galactic environment in star formation.
