Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2001-03-22
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in: Modes of Star Formation and the Origin of Field Populations, E. K. Grebel, W. Brandner (eds.
Scientific paper
One of the present concepts for the onset of massive star formation is the Kennicutt criterion. This relates the onset of massive star formation to a general gravitational instability of the gas disks of spiral galaxies. It is often overlooked, however that such gravitational instabilities of the gas disks have severe implications for the overall stability of the gas and star disks of spiral galaxies. I show by numerical simulations of the evolution of a combined gas and star disk that the violation of the stability condition induces violent dynamical evolution of the combined system. In particular the star disk heats up on time scales less than a Gyr to unrealistic high values of the Toomre stability parameter Q. The morphologies of both the star and gas disk resemble then no longer observed morphologies of spiral galaxies. Star formation of stars on low velocity dispersion orbits would lead to dynamical cooling of the disks to more realistic states. However, the required star formation rate is extremely high.
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