Speaker
Description
The chemistry of ions and molecules in interstellar gas plays an important role in galaxy formation, as the abundances of different chemical species determine how quickly the gas can cool. Furthermore, understanding the gas chemistry is important for interpreting a wide range of ISM emission and absorption line diagnostics. Stellar radiation affects the ISM chemistry, as it ionises the gas and dissociates molecules. However, following the full 3D radiative transfer of stellar radiation in galaxy simulations can be computationally expensive. In this talk, I will present a suite of simulations of isolated disc galaxies, from dwarfs to Milky Way-mass galaxies, in which we couple an approximate treatment for the stellar radiation from individual star particles to a time-dependent chemical model that follows the evolution of 157 ions and molecules. I will compare these to simulations in which we assume a uniform interstellar radiation field, to demonstrate how including a local treatment for stellar radiation affects the evolution of the galaxy, the properties of the multi-phase ISM, and observable ISM line diagnostics. These simulations can also be used to test how ISM line diagnostics trace the physical conditions of the ISM, which is important for interpreting observations of these lines.
| Wish list question? | 11. What aspects of multi-phase ISM physics are the sources of greatest concern in current simulations of galaxy formation? |
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