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Gas flows in galaxy mergers
(2022)
In major galaxy mergers, the orbits of stars are violently perturbed, and gas is torqued to the centre, diluting the gas metallicity and igniting a starburst. In this paper, we study the gas dynamics in and around merging galaxies using a series of cosmological magnetohydrodynamical zoom-in simulations. We find that the gas bridge connecting the merging galaxies pre-coalescence is dominated by turbulent pressure, with turbulent Mach numbers peaking at values of 1.6-3.3. This implies that bridges are dominated by supersonic turbulence, and are thus ideal candidates for studying the impact of extreme environments on star formation. We also find that gas accreted from the circumgalactic medium (CGM) during the merger significantly contributes (27-51 percent) to the star formation rate (SFR) at the time of coalescence and drives the subsequent reignition of star formation in the merger remnant. Indeed, 19-53 percent of the SFR at z = 0 originates from gas belonging to the CGM prior the merger. Finally, we investigate the origin of the metallicity-diluted gas at the centre of merging galaxies. We show that this gas is rapidly accreted on to the Galactic Centre with a time-scale much shorter than that of normal star-forming galaxies. This explains why coalescing galaxies are not well-captured by the fundamental metallicity relation.
On the toroidal-velocity antidynamo theorem under the presence of nonuniform electric conductivity
(2022)
Laminar electrically conducting Couette flows with the hydrodynamically stable quasi-Keplerian rotation profile and nonuniform conductivity are probed for dynamo instability. In spherical geometry, the equations for the poloidal and the toroidal field components completely decouple, resulting in free decay, regardless of the spatial distribution of the electric conductivity. In cylindrical geometry the poloidal and toroidal components do not decouple, but here also we do not find dynamo excitations for the cases that the electric conductivity only depends on the radius or - much more complex- that it only depends on the azimuthal or the axial coordinate. The transformation of the plane-flow dynamo model of Busse and Wicht (1992) to cylindrical or spherical geometry therefore fails. It is also shown that even the inclusion of axial flows of both directions does not support the dynamo mechanism. The Elsasser toroidal-velocity antidynamo theorem, according to which dynamos without any radial velocity component cannot work, is thus not softened by nonuniform conductivity distributions.