Pressure-regulated Feedback-modulated Star Formation as a Subgrid Model for Galaxy Formation Simulations

We present a new subgrid model for interstellar gas evolution in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation, based on the pressure-regulated, feedback-modulated (PRFM) theory of star formation. In contrast to the empirically pegged star formation prescriptions employed in current cosmological simulations, the PRFM model links the local star formation rate to the dynamic balance achieved in galactic interstellar gas between gravity and stellar feedback effects. With this formulation, both the star formation efficiency and the effective equation of state may be directly calibrated using numerical simulations, such as TIGRESS, which resolve physics of the interstellar medium and star formation at parsec scales. We develop, and implement in the Arepo moving-mesh code, two complementary classes of the subgrid model: a volumetric version (PRFM-vol), applicable when the gas disk scale height of a galaxy is numerically resolved in a simulation, and an integrated version (PRFM-int), which reconstructs the midplane density and pressure from vertical equilibrium considerations when the true gas scale height cannot be numerically resolved. Using isolated Milky Way–like disk simulations across mass resolutions 10⁵–10⁷ M_⊙, we show that both implementations yield shorter gas depletion times than the IllustrisTNG prescription, especially in regions where the pressure and density are large. At high resolution, PRFM-vol and PRFM-int agree closely with each other and with TIGRESS for the star formation rate; PRFM-int remains robust at all resolutions tested. These results demonstrate that PRFM-derived subgrid prescriptions provide a physically grounded and numerically stable framework for star formation across the dynamic range of galaxy formation simulations, paving the way for future cosmological applications.