Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

Understanding the cold atomic hydrogen gas (H i) within cosmic filaments has the potential to pin down the relationship between the low density gas in the cosmic web and how the galaxies that lie within it grow using this material. We report the discovery of a cosmic filament using 14 H i-selected galaxies that form a very thin elongated structure of 1.7 Mpc. These galaxies are embedded within a much larger cosmic web filament, traced by optical galaxies, that spans at least Mpc. We find that the spin axes of the H i galaxies are significantly more strongly aligned with the cosmic web filament () than cosmological simulations predict, with the optically selected galaxies showing alignment to a lesser degree (). This structure demonstrates that within the cosmic filament, the angular momentum of galaxies is closely connected to the large-scale filamentary structure. We also find strong evidence that the galaxies are orbiting around the spine of the filament, making this one of the largest rotating structures discovered thus far, and from which we can infer that there is transfer of angular momentum from the filament to the individual galaxies. The abundance of H i galaxies along the filament and the low dynamical temperature of the galaxies within the filament indicates that this filament is at an early evolutionary stage where the imprint of cosmic matter flow on galaxies has been preserved over cosmic time.

Abstract:

Dwarf galaxies provide powerful laboratories for studying galaxy formation physics. Their early assembly, shallow gravitational potentials, and bursty, clustered star formation histories make them especially sensitive to the processes that regulate baryons through multiphase outflows. Using high-resolution, cosmological zoom-in simulations of a dwarf galaxy from the Pandora suite, we explore the impact of stellar radiation, magnetic fields, and cosmic ray feedback on star formation, outflows, and metal retention. We find that our purely hydrodynamical model without non-thermal physics – in which supernova feedback is boosted to reproduce realistic stellar mass assembly – drives violent, overly enriched outflows that suppress the metal content of the host galaxy. Including radiation reduces the clustering of star formation and weakens feedback. However, the additional incorporation of cosmic rays produces fast, mass-loaded, multiphase outflows consisting of both ionized and neutral gas components, in better agreement with observations. These outflows, which entrain a denser, more temperate interstellar medium, exhibit broad metallicity distributions while preserving metals within the galaxy. Furthermore, the star formation history becomes more bursty, in agreement with recent James Webb Space Telescope findings. These results highlight the essential role of non-thermal physics in galaxy evolution and the need to incorporate it in future galaxy formation models.