研究者業績

基本情報

所属
国立研究開発法人宇宙航空研究開発機構 宇宙科学研究所
学位
D.Phil (Astrophysics)(University of Oxford, UK)
M.Sci (Theoretical Physics)(Durham University, UK)

研究者番号
40620373
J-GLOBAL ID
201301090743837223
researchmap会員ID
B000228219

外部リンク

My research is study of formation and evolution of galaxies in Astrophysics.


論文

 42
  • Florian Lalande, Elizabeth Tasker, Kenji Doya
    The Open Journal of Astrophysics 2024年10月10日  査読有り
  • Elizabeth J. Tasker, Vanessa A. Moss, Glen A. Rees, Aidan W. Hotan, Ronald D. Ekers, Rika Kobayashi, Emily F. Kerrison, Katrina V. Amos
    CAP Journal: Communicating Astronomy with the Public (35) 30-38 2024年7月  査読有り筆頭著者
  • Vanessa Moss, Glen Rees, Aidan Hotan, Emily Kerrison, Elizabeth Tasker, Rika Kobayashi, Claire Trenham, Ron Ekers, Travis Rector
    Climate Change for Astronomers 19-1-19-40 2024年5月1日  
  • Elizabeth Tasker
    Science 384 278-278 2024年4月  招待有り
  • Vanessa A. Moss, Glen A. Rees, Aidan W. Hotan, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Rika Kobayashi, Emily F. Kerrison, Katrina V. H. Amos, Ron D. Ekers
    Nature Astronomy 7(12) 1412-1414 2023年12月13日  
  • Abigail J. Frost, Ryan M. Lau, Leonard Burtscher, Chris Packham, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Glen A. Rees, Vanessa A. Moss, Rika Kobayashi
    Nature Astronomy 6(7) 772-773 2022年7月18日  
  • Makoto Yoshikawa, Elizabeth Tasker, Satoshi Hosoda, Moe Matsuoka, Yasuhiro Yokota, Satoru Nakazawa, Yuichi Tsuda
    Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission: Technological Innovation and Advances 541-556 2022年1月1日  
    Hayabusa2 was a mission with a series of challenging operations and a scientific goal that related to the origins of life. These attributes presented an opportunity to engage with a wide range of people beyond the scientific community who might be inspired by the difficulty of the engineering or relate to a search for how life on Earth began. The mission's outreach program aimed to share news throughout the mission in Japan and overseas, with regular updates on mission operations, real-time events for an immersive feel during major operations and campaigns to allow people to connect with the team.
  • Makoto Yoshikawa, Yuichi Tsuda, Satoru Nakazawa, Satoshi Tanaka, Tomohiro Usui, Elizabeth Tasker, Shogo Tachibana, Sei Ichiro Watanabe
    Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC A3 2021年  
    Hayabusa2 is the second asteroid sample return mission in the world following Hayabusa. The target asteroid was (162173) Ryugu, a C-Type near-Earth asteroid. The principal science purpose of the mission is to study the organic matter and water in the early stages of the Solar System, with the aim to understand the origin of the Earth s water and that of the substances that began life, as well as the origin and evolution of Solar System bodies. The mission successfully returned samples from Ryugu and collected a large amount of data on the asteroid through the onboard instruments, rovers, and lander. The mission completed several challenges such as two touchdowns, an impact experiment, and artificial satellite experiments. All of these challenges were important from the scientific point of view. The results revealed a range of the physical properties of Ryugu. With the samples of Ryugu now back on Earth, the sample analysis is currently underway to understand the materials from the early era of our Solar System. In addition to the scientific research, the mission also focused on outreach. We carried out a number of special campaigns, such as observations of the asteroid and spacecraft from Earth and an art contest, many talk events, web and twitter releases among other activities. We tried to inform people about our mission in real time and also tried to publish information both in Japanese and English simultaneously. Through these activities, we think we were able to make people feel connected with the Hayabusa2 mission and we hope that many more people have become interested in space activities. In this paper, we summarize the results of science and outreach for the Hayabusa2 mission.
  • Unterborn, Cayman T, Byrne, Paul K, Anbar, Ariel D, Arney, Giada, Brain, David, Desch, Steve J, Foley, Bradford J, Gilmore, Martha S, Hartnett, Hilairy E, Henning, Wade G, Hirschmann, Marc M, Izenberg, Noam R, Kane, Stephen R, Kite, Edwin S, Kreidberg, Laura, Lee, Kanani K. M, Lyons, Timothy W, Olson, Stephanie L, Panero, Wendy R, Planavsky, Noah J. Reinhard, Christopher T, Renaud, Joseph P, Schaefer, Laura K, Schwieterman, Edward W, Sohl, Linda E, Tasker, Elizabeth J, Way, Michael J
    2023-2033 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey (white paper) 2020年7月  
  • Elizabeth J. Tasker, Kana Ishimaru, Nicholas Guttenberg, Julien Foriel
    International Journal of Astrobiology 19(3) 264-275 2020年6月  査読有り筆頭著者
    <title>Abstract</title><monospace>Earth-Like</monospace> is an interactive website and twitter bot that allows users to explore changes in the average global surface temperature of an Earth-like planet due to variations in the surface oceans and emerged land coverage, rate of volcanism (degassing) and the level of the received solar radiation. The temperature is calculated using a simple carbon–silicate cycle model to change the level of CO2 in the atmosphere based on the chosen parameters. The model can achieve a temperature range exceeding −100°C to 100°C by varying all three parameters, including freeze-thaw cycles for a planet with our present-day volcanism rate and emerged land fraction situated at the outer edge of the habitable zone. To increase engagement, the planet is visualized by using a neural network to render an animated globe, based on the calculated average surface temperature and chosen values for land fraction and volcanism. The website and bot can be found at <monospace>earthlike.world</monospace> and on twitter as <monospace>@earthlikeworld</monospace>. Initial feedback via a user survey suggested that <monospace>Earth-Like</monospace> is effective at demonstrating that minor changes in planetary properties can strongly impact the surface environment. The goal of the project is to increase understanding of the challenges we face in finding another habitable planet due to the likely diversity of conditions on rocky worlds within our Galaxy.
  • Elizabeth J. Tasker, Matthieu Laneuville, Nicholas Guttenberg
    The Astronomical Journal 159(2) 41-41 2020年1月7日  査読有り筆頭著者
  • Corey Brummel-Smith, Greg Bryan, Iryna Butsky, Lauren Corlies, Andrew Emerick, John Forbes, Yusuke Fujimoto, Nathan Goldbaum, Philipp Grete, Cameron Hummels, Ji-hoon Kim, Daegene Koh, Miao Li, Yuan Li, Xinyu Li, Brian O'Shea, Molly Peeples, John Regan, Munier Salem, Wolfram Schmidt, Christine Simpson, Britton Smith, Jason Tumlinson, Matthew Turk, John Wise, Tom Abel, James Bordner, Renyue Cen, David Collins, Brian Crosby, Philipp Edelmann, Oliver Hahn, Robert Harkness, Elizabeth Harper-Clark, Shuo Kong, Alexei Kritsuk, Michael Kuhlen, James Larrue, Eve Lee, Greg Meece, Michael Norman, Jeffrey Oishi, Pascal Paschos, Carolyn Peruta, Alex Razoumov, Daniel Reynolds, Devin Silvia, Samuel Skillman, Stephen Skory, Geoffrey So, Elizabeth Tasker, Rick Wagner, Peng Wang, Hao Xu, Fen Zhao
    Journal of Open Source Software 4(42) 1636-1636 2019年10月3日  査読有り
  • Danielle M. DeLatte, Sarah T. Crites, Nicholas Guttenberg, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Takehisa Yairi
    IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 12(8) 2944-2957 2019年8月  査読有り
  • S M Benincasa, J W Wadsley, H M P Couchman, A R Pettitt, E J Tasker
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2019年4月27日  査読有り
  • 51(3) 31 2019年3月  
    The habitable zone (HZ) is the region around a star(s) where standing bodies of water could exist on the surface of a rocky planet. The classical HZ definition makes a number of assumptions common to the Earth, including assuming that the most important greenhouse gases for habitable planets are CO2 and H2O, habitable planets orbit main-sequence stars, and that the carbonate-silicate cycle is a universal process on potentially habitable planets. Here, we discuss these and other predictions for the habitable zone and the observations that are needed to test them. We also, for the first time, argue why A-stars may be interesting HZ prospects. Instead of relying on unverified extrapolations from our Earth, we argue that future habitability studies require first principles approaches where temporal, spatial, physical, chemical, and biological systems are dynamically coupled. We also suggest that next-generation missions are only the beginning of a much more data-filled era in the not-too-distant future, when possibly hundreds to thousands of HZ planets will yield the statistical data we need to go beyond just finding habitable zone planets to actually determining which ones are most likely to exhibit life.
  • Fujimoto} Masaki, Tasker} Elizabeth J
    Nature Astronomy 3(4) 284-286 2019年  査読有り
  • Alex R Pettitt, Fumi Egusa, Clare L Dobbs, Elizabeth J Tasker, Yusuke Fujimoto, Asao Habe
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 480(3) 3356-3375 2018年11月1日  査読有り
  • Elizabeth Tasker
    Nature Astronomy 2(6) 502-502 2018年6月1日  査読有り
  • Kazuhiro Shima, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Christoph Federrath, Asao Habe
    Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan 70 S541-S5411 2018年5月1日  査読有り
    We investigate star formation occurring in idealized giant molecular clouds, comparing structures that evolve in isolation versus those undergoing a collision. Two different collision speeds are investigated and the impact of photoionizing radiation from the stars is determined. We find that a colliding system leads tomoremassive star formation both with and without the addition of feedback, raising overall star formation efficiencies (SFE) by a factor of 10 and steepening the high-mass end of the stellar mass function. This rise in SFE is due to increased turbulent compression during the cloud collision. While feedback can both promote and hinder star formation in an isolated system, it increases the SFE by approximately 1.5 times in the colliding case when the thermal speed of the resulting HII regions matches the shock propagation speed in the collision.
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan 70 S581-S5813 2018年5月1日  査読有り
  • Ngan K. Nguyen, Alex R. Pettitt, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Takashi Okamoto
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 475(1) 27-42 2018年3月21日  査読有り
    We explore the effect of different galactic disc environments on the properties of star-forming clouds through variations in the background potential in a set of isolated galaxy simulations. Rising, falling, and flat rotation curves expected in halo-dominated, disc-dominated, and Milky Way-like galaxies were considered, with and without an additional two-arm spiral potential. The evolution of each disc displayed notable variations that are attributed to different regimes of stability, determined by shear and gravitational collapse. The properties of a typical cloud were largely unaffected by the changes in rotation curve, but the production of small and large cloud associations was strongly dependent on this environment. This suggests that while differing rotation curves can influence where clouds are initially formed, the average bulk properties are effectively independent of the global environment. The addition of a spiral perturbation made the greatest difference to cloud properties, successfully sweeping the gas into larger, seemingly unbound, extended structures and creating large arm-interarm contrasts.
  • アレクス・ペティット
    MNRAS 468(4) 4189-4204 2017年7月  査読有り
    Tidal encounters are believed to be one of the key drivers of galactic spiral structure in the Universe. Such spirals are expected to produce different morphological and kinematic features compared to density wave and dynamic spiral arms. In this work, we present high-resolution simulations of a tidal encounter of a small mass companion with a disc galaxy. Included are the effects of gas cooling and heating, star formation and stellar feedback. The structure of the perturbed disc differs greatly from the isolated galaxy, showing clear spiral features that act as sites of new star formation, and displaying interarm spurs. The two arms of the galaxy, the bridge and tail, appear to behave differently; with different star formation histories and structure. Specific attention is focused on offsets between gas and stellar spiral features which can be directly compared to observations.We find that some offsets do exist between different media, with gaseous arms appearing mostly on the convex side of the stellar arms, though the exact locations appear highly time dependent. These results further highlight the differences between tidal spirals and other theories of arm structure.
  • Keitaro Jin, Diane M. Salim, Christoph Federrath, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Asao Habe, Jouni T. Kainulainen
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 469(1) 383-393 2017年7月  査読有り
    We determine the physical properties and turbulence driving mode of molecular clouds formed in numerical simulations of a Milky Way-type disc galaxy with parsec-scale resolution. The clouds form through gravitational fragmentation of the gas, leading to average values for mass, radii and velocity dispersion in good agreement with observations of Milky Way clouds. The driving parameter (b) for the turbulence within each cloud is characterized by the ratio of the density contrast (sigma(rho/rho 0)) to the average Mach number (M) within the cloud, b = sigma(rho/rho 0)/M. As shown in previous works, b similar to 1/3 indicates solenoidal (divergence-free) driving and b similar to 1 indicates compressive (curl-free) driving. We find that the average b value of all the clouds formed in the simulations has a lower limit of b &gt; 0.2. Importantly, we find that b has a broad distribution, covering values from purely solenoidal to purely compressive driving. Tracking the evolution of individual clouds reveals that the b value for each cloud does not vary significantly over their lifetime. Finally, we perform a resolution study with minimum cell sizes of 8, 4, 2 and 1 pc and find that the average b value increases with increasing resolution. Therefore, we conclude that our measured b values are strictly lower limits and that a resolution better than 1 pc is required for convergence. However, regardless of the resolution, we find that b varies by factors of a few in all cases, which means that the effective driving mode alters significantly from cloud to cloud.
  • Kazuhiro Shima, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Asao Habe
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 467(1) 512-523 2017年5月  査読有り
    We investigated the effect of photoionizing feedback inside turbulent star-forming clouds, comparing the resultant star formation in both idealized profiles and more realistic cloud structures drawn from a global galaxy simulation. We performed a series of numerical simulations that compared the effect of star formation alone, photoionization and photoionization plus supernovae feedback. In the idealized cloud, photoionization suppresses gas fragmentation at early times, resulting in the formation of more massive stars and an increase in the star formation efficiency. At later times, the dispersal of the dense gas causes the radiative feedback effect to switch from positive to negative as the star formation efficiency drops. In the cloud extracted from the global simulation, the initial cloud is heavily fragmented prior to the stellar-feedback beginning and is largely structurally unaffected by the late injection of radiation energy. The result is a suppression of the star formation. We conclude that the efficiency of feedback is heavily dependent on the gas structure, with negative feedback dominating when the density is high.
  • Fujimoto Yusuke, Bryan Greg L, Tasker Elizabeth J, Habe Asao, Simpson Christine M
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 461(2) 1684-1700 2016年9月11日  査読有り
  • Hsi-An Pan, Yusuke Fujimoto, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Erik Rosolowsky, Dario Colombo, Samantha M. Benincasa, James Wadsley
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 458(3) 2443-2453 2016年5月  査読有り
    With ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) making it possible to resolve giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in other galaxies, it is becoming necessary to quantify the observational bias on measured GMC properties. Using a hydrodynamical simulation of a barred spiral galaxy, we compared the physical properties of GMCs formed in position-position-position (PPP) space to the observational position-position-velocity (PPV) space. We assessed the effect of disc inclination: face-on (PPVface) and edge-on (PPVedge), and resolution: 1.5 pc versus 24 pc, on GMC properties and the further implications of using Larson's scaling relations for mass-radius and velocity dispersion-radius. The low-resolution PPV data are generated by simulating ALMA Cycle 3 observations using the CASA package. Results show that the median properties do not differ strongly between PPP and PPVface under both resolutions, but PPVedge clouds deviate from these two. The differences become magnified when switching to the lower, but more realistic resolution. The discrepancy can lead to opposite results for the virial parameter's measure of gravitational binding, and therefore the dynamical state of the clouds. The power-law indices for the two Larson's scaling relations decrease going from PPP, PPVedge to PPVface and decrease from high to low resolutions. We conclude that the relations are not entirely driven by the underlying physical origin and therefore have to be used with caution when considering the environmental dependence, dynamical state, and the extragalactic CO-to-H-2 conversion factor of GMCs.
  • Alex R. Pettitt, Elizabeth J. Tasker, James W. Wadsley
    FROM INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS TO STAR-FORMING GALAXIES: UNIVERSAL PROCESSES? (315) 2016年  査読有り
    The existence of grand design spiral galaxies in the universe is still a standing problem. The passage of a small companion is known to be able to induce spiral structures in disc galaxies, but there remains questions over how relevant this mechanism is to the galaxies ob served in the real universe. Our study aims to address two key points regarding such interactions; the limiting mass companion needed to drive tidal spiral structures, and the differences between the resulting gas and stellar morphology. We find the minimum mass of a companion to be as low as 5% of the stellar mass of the galaxy, and that the arms formed in the gas and the stars display very minor dynamical and morphological differences.
  • Shima Kazuhiro, Tasker Elizabeth J, Habe Asao
    FROM INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS TO STAR-FORMING GALAXIES: UNIVERSAL PROCESSES? (315) 2016年  査読有り
  • MNRAS 458 3390-4007 2016年  査読有り
  • Hsi-An Pan, Yusuke Fujimoto, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Erik Rosolowsky, Dario Colombo, Samantha M. Benincasa, James Wadsley
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 453(3) 3082-3099 2015年11月  査読有り
    As both simulations and observations reach the resolution of the star-forming molecular clouds, it becomes important to clarify if these two techniques are discussing the same objects in galaxies. We compare clouds formed in a high-resolution galaxy simulation identified as continuous structures within a contour, in the simulator's position-position-position (PPP) coordinate space and the observer's position-position-velocity space (PPV). Results indicate that the properties of the cloud populations are similar in both methods and up to 70 per cent of clouds have a single counterpart in the opposite data structure. Comparing individual clouds in a one-to-one match reveals a scatter in properties mostly within a factor of 2. However, the small variations in mass, radius and velocity dispersion produce significant differences in derived quantities such as the virial parameter. This makes it difficult to determine if a structure is truly gravitationally bound. The three cloud types originally found in the simulation in Fujimoto et al. are identified in both data sets, with around 80 per cent of the clouds retaining their type between identification methods. We also compared our results when using a peak decomposition method to identify clouds in both PPP and PPV space. The number of clouds increased with this technique, but the overall cloud properties remained similar. However, the more crowded environment lowered the ability to match clouds between techniques to 40 per cent. The three cloud types also became harder to separate, especially in the PPV data set. The method used for cloud identification therefore plays a critical role in determining cloud properties, but both PPP and PPV can potentially identify the same structures.
  • T. J. Haworth, E. J. Tasker, Y. Fukui, K. Torii, J. E. Dale, K. Shima, K. Takahira, A. Habe, K. Hasegawa
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 450(1) 10-20 2015年6月  査読有り
    Collisions between giant molecular clouds are a potential mechanism for triggering the formation of massive stars, or even super star clusters. The trouble is identifying this process observationally and distinguishing it from other mechanisms. We produce synthetic position-velocity diagrams from models of cloud-cloud collisions, non-interacting clouds along the line of sight, clouds with internal radiative feedback and a more complex cloud evolving in a galactic disc, to try and identify unique signatures of collision. We find that a broad bridge feature connecting two intensity peaks, spatially correlated but separated in velocity, is a signature of a high-velocity cloud-cloud collision. We show that the broad bridge feature is resilient to the effects of radiative feedback, at least to around 2.5 Myr after the formation of the first massive (ionizing) star. However for a head-on 10 km s(-1) collision, we find that this will only be observable from 20 to 30 per cent of viewing angles. Such broad-bridge features have been identified towards M20, a very young region of massive star formation that was concluded to be a site of cloud-cloud collision by Torii et al., and also towards star formation in the outer Milky Way by Izumi et al.
  • Tasker Elizabeth J., Wadsley James, Pudritz Ralph
    Astrophysical Journal 801(1) 33-33 2015年3月1日  
    Stellar feedback, star formation, and gravitational interactions are major controlling forces in the evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs). To explore their relative roles, we examine the properties and evolution of GMCs forming in an isolated galactic disk simulation that includes both localized thermal feedback and photoelectric heating. The results are compared with the three previous simulations in this series, which consists of a model with no star formation, star formation but no form of feedback, and star formation with photoelectric heating in a set with steadily increasing physical effects. We find that the addition of localized thermal feedback greatly suppresses star formation but does not destroy the surrounding GMC, giving cloud properties closely resembling the run in which no stellar physics is included. The outflows from the feedback reduce the mass of the cloud but do not destroy it, allowing the cloud to survive its stellar children. This suggests that weak thermal feedback such as the lower bound expected for a supernova may play a relatively minor role in the galactic structure of quiescent Milky-Way-type galaxies, compared to gravitational interactions and disk shear.
  • アレクス・ペティット
    Proceedings of IAU 315 2015年  
  • Yusuke Fujimoto, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Asao Habe
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 445(1) L65-L69 2014年11月  査読有り
    Cloud collision has been proposed as a way to link the small-scale star formation process with the observed global relation between the surface star formation rate and gas surface density. We suggest that this model can be improved further by allowing the productivity of such collisions to depend on the relative velocity of the two clouds. Our adjustment implements a simple step function that results in the most successful collisions being at the observed velocities for triggered star formation. By applying this to a high-resolution simulation of a barred galaxy, we successfully reproduce the observational result that the star formation efficiency (SFE) in the bar is lower than that in the spiral arms. This is not possible when we use an efficiency dependent on the internal turbulence properties of the clouds. Our results suggest that high-velocity collisions driven by the gravitational pull of the clouds are responsible for the low bar SFE.
  • Ken Takahira, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Asao Habe
    ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL 792(1) 2014年9月  査読有り
    We performed sub-parsec (similar to 0.06 pc) scale simulations of two idealized molecular clouds with different masses undergoing a collision. Gas clumps with densities greater than 10(-20) g cm(-3) (0.3 x 10(4) cm(-3)) were identified as pre-stellar cores and tracked throughout the simulation. The colliding system showed a partial gas arc morphology with core formation in the oblique shock front at the collision interface. These characteristics support NANTEN observations of objects suspected to be colliding giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We investigated the effect of turbulence and collision speed on the resulting core population and compared the cumulative mass distribution to cores in observed GMCs. Our results suggest that a faster relative velocity increases the number of cores formed but that cores grow via accretion predominately while in the shock front, leading to a slower shock being more important for core growth. The core masses obey a power-law relation with index gamma = -1.6, in good agreement with observations. This suggests that core production through collisions should follow a similar mass distribution as quiescent formation, albeit at a higher mass range. If cores can be supported against collapse during their growth, then the estimated ram pressure from gas infall is of the right order to counter the radiation pressure and form a star of 100 M-circle dot.
  • Aya E. Higuchi, James O. Chibueze, Asao Habe, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Ken Takahira, and Shuro Takano
    Astronomical Journal 147(6) 141 2014年6月  査読有り
  • Yusuke Fujimoto, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Mariko Wakayama, Asao Habe
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 439(1) 936-953 2014年3月  査読有り
    We investigate the impact of galactic environment on the properties of simulated giant molecular clouds (GMCs) formed in an M83-type barred spiral galaxy. Our simulation uses a rotating stellar potential to create the grand design features and resolves down to 1.5 pc. From the comparison of clouds found in the bar, spiral and disc regions, we find that the typical GMC is environment independent, with a mass of 5 x 10(5) M-circle dot and radius 11 pc. However, the fraction of clouds in the property distribution tails varies between regions, with larger, more massive clouds with a higher velocity dispersion being found in greatest proportions in the bar, spiral and then disc. The bar clouds also show a bimodality that is not reflected in the spiral and disc clouds except in the surface density, where all three regions show two distinct peaks. We identify these features as being due to the relative proportion of three cloud types, classified via the mass-radius scaling relation, which we label A, B and C. Type A clouds have the typical values listed above and form the largest fraction in each region. Type B clouds are massive giant molecular associations (GMAs) while type C clouds are unbound, transient clouds that form in dense filaments and tidal tails. The fraction of each clouds type depends on the cloud-cloud interactions, which cause mergers to build up the GMA type Bs and tidal features in which the type C clouds are formed. The number of cloud interactions is greatest in the bar, followed by the spiral, causing a higher fraction of both cloud types compared to the disc. While the cloud types also exist in lower resolution simulations, their identification becomes more challenging as they are not well-separated populations on the mass-radius relation or distribution plots. Finally, we compare the results for three star formation models to estimate the star formation rate and efficiency in each galactic region.
  • Yusuke Fujimoto, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Asao Habe
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 445(1) L65-L69 2014年  査読有り
    Cloud collision has been proposed as a way to link the small-scale star formation process with the observed global relation between the surface star formation rate and gas surface density.We suggest that this model can be improved further by allowing the productivity of such collisions to depend on the relative velocity of the two clouds. Our adjustment implements a simple step function that results in the most successful collisions being at the observed velocities for triggered star formation. By applying this to a high-resolution simulation of a barred galaxy, we successfully reproduce the observational result that the star formation efficiency (SFE) in the bar is lower than that in the spiral arms. This is not possible when we use an efficiency dependent on the internal turbulence properties of the clouds. Our results suggest that highvelocity collisions driven by the gravitational pull of the clouds are responsible for the low bar SFE.
  • Samantha M. Benincasa, Elizabeth J. Tasker, Ralph E. Pudritz, James Wadsley
    Astrophysical Journal 776(1) 2013年10月10日  
    We present the results of a study of simulated giant molecular clouds (GMCs) formed in a Milky Way-type galactic disk with a flat rotation curve. This simulation, which does not include star formation or feedback, produces clouds with masses ranging between 104 M⊙ and 107 M⊙. We compare our simulated cloud population to two observational surveys: the Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey and the BIMA All-Disk Survey of M33. An analysis of the global cloud properties as well as a comparison of Larson's scaling relations is carried out. We find that simulated cloud properties agree well with the observed cloud properties, with the closest agreement occurring between the clouds at comparable resolution in M33. Our clouds are highly filamentary - a property that derives both from their formation due to gravitational instability in the sheared galactic environment, as well as to cloud-cloud gravitational encounters. We also find that the rate at which potentially star-forming gas accumulates within dense regions - wherein n thresh≥ 104 cm-3 - is 3% per 10 Myr, in clouds of roughly 106 M⊙. This suggests that star formation rates in observed clouds are related to the rates at which gas can be accumulated into dense subregions within GMCs via filamentary flows. The most internally well-resolved clouds are chosen for listing in a catalog of simulated GMCs - the first of its kind. The cataloged clouds are available as an extracted data set from the global simulation. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
  • Elizabeth J. Tasker
    ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL 730(1) 2011年3月  査読有り
    We investigate the effect of star formation and diffuse photoelectric heating on the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) formed in high-resolution (less than or similar to 10 pc) global (similar to 20 kpc) simulations of isolated Milky-Way-type galaxy disks. The clouds are formed through gravitational fragmentation, and structures with densities n(H,c) &gt; 100 cm(-3) are identified as GMCs. Between 1000 and 1500 clouds are created in the simulations with masses M &gt; 10(5) M-circle dot and 180-240 with masses M &gt; 10(6) M-circle dot in agreement with estimates of the Milky Way's population. We find that the effect of photoelectric heating is to suppress the fragmentation of the interstellar medium, resulting in a filamentary structure in the warm gas surrounding clouds. This environment suppresses the formation of a retrograde rotating cloud population, with 88% of the clouds rotating prograde with respect to the galaxy after 300 Myr. The diffuse heating also reduces the initial star formation rate (SFR), slowing the conversation of gas into stars. We therefore conclude that the interstellar environment plays an important role in the GMC evolution. Our clouds live between 0 and 20 Myr with a high infant mortality (t' &lt; 3 Myr) due to cloud mergers and star formation. Other properties, including distributions of mass, size, and surface density, agree well with observations. Collisions between our clouds are common, occurring at a rate of similar to 1/4 of the orbital period. It is not clear whether such collisions trigger or suppress star formation at our current resolution. Our SFR is a factor of 10 higher than observations in local galaxies. This is likely due to the absence of localized feedback in our models.
  • Elizabeth J. Tasker, Riccardo Brunino, Nigel L. Mitchell, Dolf Michielsen, Stephen Hopton, Frazer R. Pearce, Greg L. Bryan, Tom Theuns
    MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 390(3) 1267-1281 2008年11月  査読有り
    We test four commonly used astrophysical simulation codes, ENZO, FLASH, GADGET and HYDRA, using a suite of numerical problems with analytic initial and final states. Situations similar to the conditions of these tests, a Sod shock, a Sedov blast, and both a static and translating King sphere, occur commonly in astrophysics, where the accurate treatment of shocks, sound waves, supernovae explosions and collapsed haloes is a key condition for obtaining reliable validated simulations. We demonstrate that comparable results can be obtained for Lagrangian and Eulerian codes by requiring that approximately one particle exists per grid cell in the region of interest. We conclude that adaptive Eulerian codes, with their ability to place refinements in regions of rapidly changing density, are well suited to problems where physical processes are related to such changes. Lagrangian methods, on the other hand, are well suited to problems where large density contrasts occur and the physics are related to the local density itself rather than the local density gradient.

MISC

 1
  • Elizabeth Tasker, Joshua Tan, Kevin Heng, Stephen Kane, David Spiegel, Ramon Brasser, Andrew Casey, Steven Desch, Caroline Dorn, John Hernlund, Christine Houser, Matthieu Laneuville, Marine Lasblei, Anne-Sophie Libert, Lena Noack, Cayman Unterborn, June Wicks
    Nature Astronomy 1 2017年3月2日  

書籍等出版物

 5

主要な講演・口頭発表等

 13

共同研究・競争的資金等の研究課題

 3

メディア報道

 5