Metallicity Gradients in Modern Cosmological Simulations. I. Tension between Smooth Stellar Feedback Models and Observations

作者：Alex M. Garcia, Paul Torrey, Aniket Bhagwat, Ruby J. Wright, Qianhui Chen, Kathryn Grasha, Sophia G. Ridolfo, Z. S. Hemler, Arnab Sarkar, Priyanka Chakraborty, Erica J. Nelson, Ryan L. Sanders, Tiago Costa, Mark Vogelsberger, Lisa J. Kewley, Sara L. Ellison, Lars Hernquist · 发表于：The Astrophysical Journal · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3847/1538-4357/adea51 · 被引用次数：13 · 研究领域：Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena、Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies、Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies

Abstract The metallicity of galaxies, and its variation with galactocentric radius, provides key insights into the formation histories of galaxies and the physical processes driving their evolution. In this work, we analyze the radial metallicity gradients of star-forming galaxies in the EAGLE, Illustris, IllustrisTNG, and SIMBA cosmological simulations across broad mass (10 8.0 M ⊙ ≤ M ⋆ ≲ 10 12.0 M ⊙ ) and redshift (0 ≤ z ≤ 8) ranges. We find that all simulations predict strong negative (i.e., radially decreasing) metallicity gradients at early cosmic times, likely due to their similar treatments of relatively smooth stellar feedback not providing sufficient mixing to quickly flatten gradients. The strongest redshift evolution occurs in galaxies with stellar masses of 10 10.0 –10 11.0 M ⊙ , while galaxies with stellar mass < 10 10 M ⊙ and >10 11 M ⊙ exhibit weaker redshift evolution. Our result of negative gradients at high redshift contrast with the many positive and flat gradients in the 1 < z < 4 observational literature. At z > 6, the negative gradients observed with JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array are flatter than those in simulations, albeit with closer agreement than at lower redshift. Overall, we suggest that these smooth stellar feedback galaxy simulations may not sufficiently mix their metal content radially, and that either stronger stellar feedback or additional subgrid turbulent metal diffusion models may be required to ...