Violence in the Dark Ages

A wide range of observational and theoretical arguments suggest that the universe experienced a period of heating and metal enrichment, most likely from starbursting dwarf galaxies. Using a hydrodynamic simulation we have conducted a detailed theoretical investigation of this epoch at the end of the cosmological “dark ages”. Outflows strip baryons from pre-viralized halos with total masses ∼ <10 M⊙, reducing their number density and the overall star formation rate, while pushing these quantities toward their observed values. We show that the metallicity of ∼ <10 M⊙ objects increases with size, but with a large scatter, reproducing the metallicity-luminosity relation of dwarf galaxies. Galaxies ∼ >10 M⊙ form with a roughly constant initial metallicity of 10% solar, explaining the observed lack of metal-poor disk stars in these objects. Outflows enrich roughly 20% of the simulation volume, yielding a mean metallicity of 0.3% solar, in agreement with observations of CIV in QSO absorption-line systems.