The atomic gas in outer disks in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation†

We use semi-analytic models of galaxy formation L-Galaxies based on ΛCDM cosmology to study the HI gas component in galaxy outskirts. We adopt the radially-resolved version of the models by Fu et al. (2013), which includes both atomic and molecular gas component in interstellar medium. This model has been recently updated by Luo et al. (2016) to include cold gas stripping in the outer disk regions of the satellite galaxies by ram pressure. In our models, we can perfectly reproduce the HI size-mass relation, which is discovered by Broeils & Rhee (1997) and confirmed by many subsequent observations. In our model, the reason for such tight correlation between HI size and mass is atomic-molecular phase conversion in high gas surface density regions while HI ionization in low gas surface density region, which leads to very narrow distribution of HI mean surface density. The models also reproduce the universal exponential HI radial profiles in galaxy outskirts found by Bluedisk (Wang et al. 2013), which arises from cold gas accretion onto the galaxy disks in exponentially profiles.