(Star)bursts of FIRE: observational signatures of bursty star formation in galaxies

Galaxy formation models are now able to reproduce observed relations such as the relation between galaxies’ star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar masses (M^*) and the stellar-mass–halo-mass relation. We demonstrate that comparisons of the short-time-scale variability in galaxy SFRs with observational data provide an additional useful constraint on the physics of galaxy formation feedback. We apply SFR indicators with different sensitivity time-scales to galaxies from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) simulations. We find that the SFR–M* relation has a significantly greater scatter when the Hα-derived SFR is considered compared with when the far-ultraviolet (FUV)-based SFR is used. This difference is a direct consequence of bursty star formation because the FIRE galaxies exhibit order-of-magnitude SFR variations over time-scales of a few Myr. We show that the difference in the scatter between the simulated Hα- and FUV-derived SFR–M^* relations at z = 2 is consistent with observational constraints. We also find that the Hα/FUV ratios predicted by the simulations at z = 0 are similar to those observed for local galaxies except for a population of low-mass (M* ≲ 10^(9.5) M_⊙) simulated galaxies with lower Hα/FUV ratios than observed. We suggest that future cosmological simulations should compare the Hα/FUV ratios of their galaxies with observations to constrain the feedback models employed.