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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the impact of star formation and thermal stellar feedback on the giant molecular cloud population forming in a M83-type barred spiral galaxy. We compare three highresolution simulations (1.5 pc cell size) with different star formation/feedback models: one with no star formation, one with star formation but no feedback, and one with star formation and thermal energy injection. We analyse the resulting population of clouds, finding that we can identify the same population of massive, virialized clouds and transient, low-surface density clouds found in our previous work (that did not include star formation or feedback). Star formation and feedback can affect the mix of clouds we identify. In particular, star formation alone simply converts dense cloud gas into stars with only a small change to the cloud populations, principally resulting in a slight decrease in the transient population. Feedback, however, has a stronger impact: while it is not generally sufficient to entirely destroy the clouds, it does eject gas out of them, increasing the gas density in the intercloud region. This decreases the number of massive clouds, but substantially increases the transient cloud population. We also find that feedback tends to drive a net radial inflow of massive clouds, leading to an increase in the star formation rate in the bar region. We examine a number of possible reasons for this and conclude that it is possible that the drag force from the enhanced intercloud density could be responsible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tidal interactions between disc galaxies and low-mass companions are an established method for generating galactic spiral features. In this work, we present a study of the structure and dynamics of spiral arms driven in interactions between disc galaxies and perturbing companions in 3D N-body/smoothed hydrodynamical numerical simulations. Our specific aims are to characterize any differences between structures formed in the gas and stars from a purely hydrodynamical and gravitational perspective, and to find a limiting case for spiral structure generation. Through analysis of a number of different interacting cases, we find that there is very little difference between arm morphology, pitch angles and pattern speeds between the two media. The main differences are a minor offset between gas and stellar arms, clear spurring features in gaseous arms, and different radial migration of material in the stronger interacting cases. We investigate the minimum mass of a companion required to drive spiral structure in a galactic disc, finding the limiting spiral generation cases with companion masses of the order of 1 ? 109M☉, equivalent to only 4 per cent of the stellar disc mass, or 0.5 per cent of the total galactic mass of a Milky Way analogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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-H2 conversion factor of GMCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]