Gas and Metal Distributions within Simulated Disk Galaxies

Abstract

We highlight two research strands related to our ongoing chemodynamical Galactic Archaeology efforts: (i) the spatio-temporal infall rate of gas onto the disk, drawing analogies with the infall behaviour imposed by classical galactic chemical evolution models of inside-out disk growth; (ii) the radial age gradient predicted by spectrophometric models of disk galaxies. In relation to (i), at low-redshift, we find that half of the infall onto the disk is gas associated with the corona, while half can be associated with cooler gas streams; we also find that gas enters the disk preferentially orthogonal to the system, rather than in-plane. In relation to (ii), we recover age gradient troughs/inflections consistent with those observed in nature, without recourse to radial migrations.

To appear in "From the First Structures to the Universe Today"; Proceedings of 2nd Workshop on Numerical and Observational Astrophysics; Buenos Aires; 14-18 Nov 2011; ed. M.W. De Rossi. S.E. Pedrosa & L.J. Pellizza; AAA Workshop Series (Argentine Astronomical Society)