Environmental Dependence of the Kennicutt-Schmidt Relation in Galaxies

Understand

We present a detailed description of a phenomenological H2 formation model and local star formation prescription based on the density of molecular (rather than total) gas.

• Such approach allows us to avoid the arbitrary density and temperature thresholds typically used in star formation recipes.
• We present results of the model based on realistic cosmological simulations of high-z galaxy formation for a grid of numerical models with varied dust-to-gas ratios and interstellar far UV (FUV) fluxes.
• Our results show that both the atomic-to-molecular transition on small, ~10 pc scales and the Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) relation on ~kpc scales are sensititive to the dust-to-gas ratio and the FUV flux.