TY - JOUR
T1 - Effects of Magnetic Fields on Gas Dynamics and Star Formation in Nuclear Rings
AU - Moon, Sanghyuk
AU - Kim, Woong Tae
AU - Kim, Chang Goo
AU - Ostriker, Eve C.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the referee for an insightful report. The work of S.M. was supported by an NRF (National Research Foundation of Korea) grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2017H1A2A1043558-Fostering Core Leaders of the Future Basic Science Program/Global Ph. D. Fellowship Program). The work of W.-T.K. was supported by the grant of National Research Foundation of Korea (2022R1A2C1004810). The work of C.-G.K. was supported in part by NASA ATP grant No. 80NSSC22K0717. The work of ECO is partly supported by the Simons Foundation under grant 510940. Computational resources for this project were provided by Princeton Research Computing, a consortium including PICSciE and OIT at Princeton University, and by the Supercomputing Center/Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information with supercomputing resources including technical support (KSC-2021-CRE-0025).
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the referee for an insightful report. The work of S.M. was supported by an NRF (National Research Foundation of Korea) grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2017H1A2A1043558-Fostering Core Leaders of the Future Basic Science Program/Global Ph. D. Fellowship Program). The work of W.-T.K. was supported by the grant of National Research Foundation of Korea (2022R1A2C1004810). The work of C.-G.K. was supported in part by NASA ATP grant No. 80NSSC22K0717. The work of ECO is partly supported by the Simons Foundation under grant 510940. Computational resources for this project were provided by Princeton Research Computing, a consortium including PICSciE and OIT at Princeton University, and by the Supercomputing Center/Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information with supercomputing resources including technical support (KSC-2021-CRE-0025).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/4/1
Y1 - 2023/4/1
N2 - Nuclear rings at the centers of barred galaxies are known to be strongly magnetized. To explore the effects of magnetic fields on star formation in these rings and nuclear gas flows, we run magnetohydrodynamic simulations in which there is a temporally constant magnetized inflow to the ring, representing a bar-driven inflow. The mass inflow rate is 1M ⊙ yr−1, and we explore models with a range of field strength in the inflow. We adopt the TIGRESS framework developed by Kim & Ostriker to handle radiative heating and cooling, star formation, and resulting supernova (SN) feedback. We find that magnetic fields are efficiently amplified in the ring due to rotational shear and SN feedback. Within a few 100 Myr, the turbulent component B trb in the ring saturates at ∼35 μG (in rough equipartition with the turbulent kinetic energy density), while the regular component B reg exceeds 50 μG. Expanding superbubbles created by clustered SN explosions vertically drag predominantly toroidal fields from near the midplane to produce poloidal fields in high-altitude regions. The growth of magnetic fields greatly suppresses star formation at late times. Simultaneously, strong magnetic tension in the ring drives radially inward accretion flows from the ring to form a circumnuclear disk in the central region; this feature is absent in the unmagnetized model.
AB - Nuclear rings at the centers of barred galaxies are known to be strongly magnetized. To explore the effects of magnetic fields on star formation in these rings and nuclear gas flows, we run magnetohydrodynamic simulations in which there is a temporally constant magnetized inflow to the ring, representing a bar-driven inflow. The mass inflow rate is 1M ⊙ yr−1, and we explore models with a range of field strength in the inflow. We adopt the TIGRESS framework developed by Kim & Ostriker to handle radiative heating and cooling, star formation, and resulting supernova (SN) feedback. We find that magnetic fields are efficiently amplified in the ring due to rotational shear and SN feedback. Within a few 100 Myr, the turbulent component B trb in the ring saturates at ∼35 μG (in rough equipartition with the turbulent kinetic energy density), while the regular component B reg exceeds 50 μG. Expanding superbubbles created by clustered SN explosions vertically drag predominantly toroidal fields from near the midplane to produce poloidal fields in high-altitude regions. The growth of magnetic fields greatly suppresses star formation at late times. Simultaneously, strong magnetic tension in the ring drives radially inward accretion flows from the ring to form a circumnuclear disk in the central region; this feature is absent in the unmagnetized model.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/acc250
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/acc250
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85152587928
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 946
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 114
ER -