The Entangled Feedback Impacts of Supernovae in Coarse- versus High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations

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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Eric, Sales, Laura V., Gutcke, Thales A., Deng, Yunwei, Li, Hui, Pakmor, Rüdiger, Marinacci, Federico, Springel, Volker, Vogelsberger, Mark, Torrey, Paul, Liu, Boyuan, Kannan, Rahul, Smith, Aaron, Bryan, Greg L.
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Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zhang, Eric
Sales, Laura V.
Gutcke, Thales A.
Deng, Yunwei
Li, Hui
Pakmor, Rüdiger
Marinacci, Federico
Springel, Volker
Vogelsberger, Mark
Torrey, Paul
Liu, Boyuan
Kannan, Rahul
Smith, Aaron
Bryan, Greg L.
author_facet Zhang, Eric
Sales, Laura V.
Gutcke, Thales A.
Deng, Yunwei
Li, Hui
Pakmor, Rüdiger
Marinacci, Federico
Springel, Volker
Vogelsberger, Mark
Torrey, Paul
Liu, Boyuan
Kannan, Rahul
Smith, Aaron
Bryan, Greg L.
contents It is often understood that supernova (SN) feedback in galaxies is responsible for regulating star formation and generating gaseous outflows. However, a detailed look at their effect on the local interstellar medium (ISM) on small mass scales in simulations shows that these processes proceed in clearly distinct channels. We demonstrate this finding in two independent simulations with solar-mass resolution, LYRA and RIGEL, of an isolated dwarf galaxy. Focusing on the immediate environment surrounding SNe, our findings suggest that the large-scale effect of a given SN on the galaxy is best predicted by its immediate local density. Outflows are driven by SNe in diffuse regions expanding to their cooling radii on large ($\sim$ kpc) scales, while dense star-forming regions are disrupted in a localized (\sim pc) manner. However, these separate feedback channels are only distinguishable at very high numerical resolutions capable of following scales $\ll 10^3 M_\odot$. On larger scales, ISM densities are greatly mis-estimated, and differences between local environments of SNe become severely washed out. We demonstrate the practical implications of this effect by comparing with a mid-resolution simulation ($M_{\rm ptcl.} \sim 200 M_\odot$) of the same dwarf using the SMUGGLE model. The coarse-resolution simulation cannot self-consistently determine whether a given SN is responsible for generating outflows or suppressing star formation, suggesting that emergent galaxy physics such as star formation regulation through hot-phase outflows is fundamentally unresolvable by subgrid stellar feedback models, without appealing directly to simulations with highly resolved ISM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_02432
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Entangled Feedback Impacts of Supernovae in Coarse- versus High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations
Zhang, Eric
Sales, Laura V.
Gutcke, Thales A.
Deng, Yunwei
Li, Hui
Pakmor, Rüdiger
Marinacci, Federico
Springel, Volker
Vogelsberger, Mark
Torrey, Paul
Liu, Boyuan
Kannan, Rahul
Smith, Aaron
Bryan, Greg L.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
It is often understood that supernova (SN) feedback in galaxies is responsible for regulating star formation and generating gaseous outflows. However, a detailed look at their effect on the local interstellar medium (ISM) on small mass scales in simulations shows that these processes proceed in clearly distinct channels. We demonstrate this finding in two independent simulations with solar-mass resolution, LYRA and RIGEL, of an isolated dwarf galaxy. Focusing on the immediate environment surrounding SNe, our findings suggest that the large-scale effect of a given SN on the galaxy is best predicted by its immediate local density. Outflows are driven by SNe in diffuse regions expanding to their cooling radii on large ($\sim$ kpc) scales, while dense star-forming regions are disrupted in a localized (\sim pc) manner. However, these separate feedback channels are only distinguishable at very high numerical resolutions capable of following scales $\ll 10^3 M_\odot$. On larger scales, ISM densities are greatly mis-estimated, and differences between local environments of SNe become severely washed out. We demonstrate the practical implications of this effect by comparing with a mid-resolution simulation ($M_{\rm ptcl.} \sim 200 M_\odot$) of the same dwarf using the SMUGGLE model. The coarse-resolution simulation cannot self-consistently determine whether a given SN is responsible for generating outflows or suppressing star formation, suggesting that emergent galaxy physics such as star formation regulation through hot-phase outflows is fundamentally unresolvable by subgrid stellar feedback models, without appealing directly to simulations with highly resolved ISM.
title The Entangled Feedback Impacts of Supernovae in Coarse- versus High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02432