Turbulent Gas-rich Disks at High Redshift: Bars and Bulges in a Radial Shear Flow

Abstract

Recent observations of high-redshift galaxies (z ≲ 7) reveal that a substantial fraction have turbulent, gas-rich disks with well-ordered rotation and elevated levels of star formation. In some instances, disks show evidence of spiral arms, with bar-like structures. These remarkable observations have encouraged us to explore a new class of dynamically self-consistent models using our agama/Ramses hydrodynamic N-body simulation framework that mimic a plausible progenitor of the Milky Way at high redshift. We explore disk gas fractions of f gas = 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100% and track the creation of stars and metals. The high gas surface densities encourage vigorous star formation, which in turn couples with the gas to drive turbulence. We explore three distinct histories: (i) there is no ongoing accretion and the gas is used up by the star formation, (ii) the star-forming gas is replenished by cooling in the hot halo gas, and (iii) in a companion paper, we revisit these models in the presence of a strong perturbing force. At low f disk (≲0.3), where f disk is the baryon mass fraction of the disk relative to dark matter within 2.2 R disk, a bar does not form in a stellar disk; this remains true even when gas dominates the inner disk potential. For a dominant baryon disk (f disk ≳ 0.5) at all gas fractions, the turbulent gas forms a strong radial shear flow that leads to an intermittent star-forming bar within about 500 Myr; turbulent gas speeds up the formation of bars compared to gas-free models. For f gas ≲ 60%, all bars survive, but for higher gas fractions, the bar devolves into a central bulge after 1 Gyr. The star-forming bars are reminiscent of recent discoveries in high-redshift Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of gaseous disks.