  Photoelectric heating (PEH) influences the temperature and density of the
interstellar medium (ISM), and potentially also affecting star formation. PEH
is expected to have a stronger effect on massive galaxies, as they host larger
dust reservoirs compared to dwarf systems. Accordingly, in this paper, we study
PEH effects in Milky Way-like galaxies using smoothed particle hydrodynamics
(SPH) code which self-consistently implements the evolution of the gas, dust,
and interstellar radiation field (ISRF). Dust evolution includes dust formation
by stars, destruction by SNe, and growth in dense media. We find that PEH
suppresses star formation due to the excess heating that reduces the ISM
density. This suppression is seen across the entire range of gas fractions,
star formation recipes, dust models, and PEH efficiencies investigated by our
code. The suppression ranges from negligible values to approximately a factor
of five depending on the specific implementation. Galaxy models having higher
gas fraction experience higher star formation suppression. The adopted dust
model also alters the extent of star formation suppression. Moreover, when PEH
is switched on, galaxy models show higher gas outflow rates and have higher
loading factors indicative of enhanced SNe feedback. In gas-rich models (i.e. a
gas fraction of 0.5), we also find that PEH suppresses the formation of disk
clumps via violent disk instabilities, and thus suppresses bulge formation via
clumps migration to the central regions.
