Artículos de revistas
On the Functional form of the Universal Star-Fomation Law
Fecha
2015Registro en:
The Astrophysical Journal, 804:54 (8pp), 2015 May 1
1538-4357
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/804/1/54
Autor
Escala Astorquiza, Andrés
Institución
Resumen
We study the functional form of the star-formation lawusing the Vaschy–Buckingham Pi theorem. We find that it should
have theform S μ S ˙ G
L gas
3 2, where L is a characteristic length that is related to an integration scale. With a reasonable
estimatefor L, we find that galaxies of different types and redshifts, including low-surface-brightness galaxiesand
individual star-forming regions in our Galaxy, obey this single star-formation law. We also find that, depending on the
assumption for L, this star-formation law adopts different formulations of S ˙ scalingthat are widely studied in the
literature: Sgas, S t , S t
3 2
gas orb gas ff and Sgas v
2
turb. We also study secondary controlling parameters of the star-formation
lawbased on the current evidence from numerical simulations, and we find that for galaxiesthe star-formation efficiency
should be controlled, at least, by the turbulent Toomre parameter andthe sonic and Alfvénic Mach numbers.