Too small to succeed: The difficulty of sustaining star formation in low-mass haloes

We present high-resolution simulations of an isolated dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy between redshifts z ∼ 10 and z ∼ 4, the epoch when several Milky Way dSph satellites experienced extended star formation, in order to understand in detail the physical processes which affect a low-mass halo's ability to retain gas. It is well established that supernova feedback is very effective at expelling gas f...