2002/09/10 by Lars Hernquist, Volker Springel · 9 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #COSMIC cancer database #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Physics #Star (game theory) #Star formation #Stars #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06499.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.341:1253,2003 · 17 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRAS
arxiv created 2002/09/10 · openalex publication_date 2003/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We use simple analytic reasoning to identify physical processes that drive the evolution of the cosmic star formation rate, , in cold dark matter universes. Based on our analysis, we formulate a model to characterize the redshift dependence of and compare it with results obtained from a set of hydrodynamic simulations that include star formation and feedback. We find that the cosmic star formation rate is described by two regimes. At early times, densities are sufficiently high and cooling times sufficiently short that abundant quantities of star-forming gas are present in all dark matter haloes that can cool by atomic processes. Consequently, generically rises exponentially as z decreases, independent of the details of the physical model for star formation, but dependent on the normalization and shape of the cosmological power spectrum. This part of the evolution is dominated by gravitationally driven growth of the halo mass function. At low redshifts, densities decline as the universe expands to the point that cooling is inhibited, limiting the amount of star-forming gas available. We find that in this regime the star formation rate scales approximately as , in proportion to the cooling rate within haloes. We demonstrate that the existence of these two regimes leads to a peak in the star formation rate at an intermediate redshift z=zpeak. We discuss how the location of this peak depends on our model parameters, and show that the peak cannot occur above a limiting redshift of z≈ 8.7. For the star formation efficiency adopted in our numerical simulations, zpeak≈ 5–6, with half of all stars forming at redshifts larger than z≃ 2.2. We derive analytic expressions for the full star formation history and show that they match our simulation results to better than ≃10 per cent. Using various approximations, we reduce the expressions to a simple analytic fitting function for that can be used to compute global cosmological quantities that are directly related to the star formation history. As examples, we consider the integrated stellar density, the supernova and gamma-ray burst rates observable on Earth, the metal enrichment history of the Universe, and the density of compact objects. We also briefly discuss the expected dependence of the star formation history on cosmological parameters and the physics of the gas.