TY - JOUR TI - Discerning the difficult-to-detect: star formation in dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-wa8b-5n36 PY - 2020 AB - In this work, we use cosmological simulations to study patterns of star formation in galaxies that have traditionally been underrepresented in surveys of galaxy formation across cosmic history. Because simulations have typically not been tuned to produce them, dwarf galaxies and low surface brightness galaxies provide a unique opportunity to test whether or not the models that we use to make bright, high mass galaxies are universal. We find that our simulations are able to reproduce a broad range of dwarf galaxy star formation histories, as well as low surface brightness galaxies, and we use these results to interpret the origin of specific types of galaxies. We identify a population of star-forming dwarf galaxies in our simulations that have experienced long periods of little to no star formation and whose properties are consistent with several dwarf galaxies observed in the local universe. We find that star formation can be reignited in these galaxies even billions of years after a quenching event through interactions with streams of gas in the intergalactic medium that compress hot halo gas. We also identify large populations of ultra-diffuse and classical low surface brightness galaxies in our simulations. Their properties are broadly consistent with those of observed samples and we predict that future observations will find that the star formation rates, HI masses, and colors of isolated ultra-diffuse galaxies are typical for their stellar masses. We find that both ultra-diffuse galaxies and classical low surface brightness galaxies are the products of major mergers that increase their angular momentum and cause star formation within the galaxies to move outward. In general, we find that environmental interactions have a significant impact on star formation in dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies - even those that appear isolated at the present day. KW - Dwarf galaxies KW - Physics and Astronomy LA - English ER -