Browsing by Author "Narayanan, Desika"

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    The cosmic evolution of the IMF under the Jeans conjecture with implications for massive galaxies
    (Oxford University Press, 2013) Narayanan, Desika; Dave, Romeel
    We examine the cosmic evolution of a stellar initial mass function (IMF) in galaxies that varies with the Jeans mass in the interstellar medium, paying particular attention to the K-band stellar mass-to-light ratio (M/LK) of present-epoch massive galaxies. We calculate the typical Jeans mass using high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations coupled with a fully radiative model for the interstellar medium (ISM), which yields a parametrization of the IMF characteristic mass as a function of galaxy star formation rate (SFR).We then calculate the star formation histories of galaxies utilizing an equilibrium galaxy growth model coupled with constraints on the star formation histories set by abundance matching models. We find that at early times, energetic coupling between dust and gas drives warm conditions in the ISM, yielding bottom-light/topheavy IMFs associated with large ISM Jeans masses for massive star-forming galaxies. Owing to the remnants of massive stars that formed during the top-heavy phases at early times, the resultant M/LK(σ) in massive galaxies at the present epoch is increased relative to the nonvarying IMF case. At late times, lower cosmic ray fluxes allow for cooler ISM temperatures in massive galaxies, and hence newly formed clusters will exhibit bottom-heavy IMFs, further increasing M/LK(σ). Our central result is hence that a given massive galaxy may go through both top-heavy and bottom-heavy IMF phases during its lifetime, though the bulk of the stars form during a top-heavy phase. Qualitatively, the variations in M/LK(σ) with galaxy mass are in agreement with observations; however, our model may not be able to account for bottom-heavy mass functions as indicated by stellar absorption features.
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    Cosmic sands: the origin of dusty, star-forming galaxies in the epoch of reionization
    (The astrophysical journal, 2023) Davé, Romeel; Lower, Sidney; Narayanan, Desika
    We present the Cosmic Sands suite of cosmological zoom-in simulations based on the simba galaxy formation model in order to study the buildup of the first massive and dusty galaxies in the early universe. Residing in the most massive halos, we find that the compact proto-massive galaxies undergo nearly continuous mergers with smaller subhalos, boosting star formation rates (SFRs) and the buildup of stellar mass. The galaxies are already appreciably chemically evolved by z = 7, with modeled dust masses comparable to those inferred from observations in the same epoch, except for the most extreme systems. We track gas accretion onto the galaxies to understand how extreme SFRs can be sustained by these early systems. We find that smooth gas accretion can maintain SFRs above 250 M · yr-1, but to achieve SFRs that boost galaxies well above the main sequence, a larger perturbation like a gas-rich major merger is necessary to trigger a starburst episode. Post-processing the Cosmic Sands simulations with dust RT, we find that, while the infrared luminosities of the most-dust-rich galaxies are comparable to local ULIRGs, they are substantially dimmer than classical z = 2 submillimeter galaxies. We end with a discussion on the possible reasons for this discrepancy at the highest masses and the future work we intend to carry out to study the chemical enrichment of the earliest dusty galaxies.
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    How well can we measure the stellar mass of a galaxy: The impact of the assumed star formation history model in SED fitting
    (IOP Publishing, 2020) Dave´, Romeel; Lower, Sidney; Narayanan, Desika
    The primary method for inferring the stellar mass (M∗) of a galaxy is through spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling. However, the technique rests on assumptions such as the galaxy star formation history and dust attenuation law that can severely impact the accuracy of derived physical properties from SED modeling. Here, we examine the effect that the assumed star formation history (SFH) has on the stellar properties inferred from SED fitting by ground truthing them against mock observations of high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamic galaxy formation simulations. Classically, SFHs are modeled with simplified parameterized functional forms, but these forms are unlikely to capture the true diversity of galaxy SFHs and may impose systematic biases with under-reported uncertainties on results. We demonstrate that flexible nonparametric star formation histories outperform traditional parametric forms in capturing variations in galaxy star formation histories, and as a result, lead to significantly improved stellar masses in SED fitting. We find a decrease in the average bias of 0.4 dex with a delayed-τ model to a bias of just under 0.05 dex for the nonparametric model. Similarly, using nonparametric star formation histories in SED fitting result in increased accuracy in recovered galaxy star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar ages.