RSAA Colloquia / Seminars / Feast-of-Facts: Tuesday, 19 April 2016, 11:00-12:00; Duffield Lecture Theatre


John Forbes

"Dwarf galaxies: in balance or off-kilter?"

Recently a powerful paradigm has emerged to understand the nature of star-forming galaxies. Their star formation rate, metallicity, and gas mass are set by a balance between star formation and outflows, and accretion. This model provides a convenient framework to understand galaxy scaling relations and their intrinsic scatter. However, because of the highly unconstrained strength of galactic winds in low-mass galaxies and the incredibly long depletion times common in dwarfs, it is unclear if dwarf galaxies also obey this equilibrium, or if dwarfs are fundamentally different from more massive star-forming galaxies. I will present high-resolution simulations of dwarf galaxies with resolved supernovae, which will reveal why dwarfs have long depletion times in the first place and whether they can launch strong enough outflows to be in equilibrium.