A High Spatial Resolution X-Ray and Hα Study of Hot Gas in the Halos of Star-forming Disk Galaxies. II. Quantifying Supernova Feedback

By D. Strickland, T. Heckman, E. Colbert, C. Hoopes, K. Weaver. 2003

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We investigate how the empirical properties of hot X-ray-emitting gas in a sample of seven starburst and three normal edge-on spiral galaxies (a sample that covers the full range of star formation intensity found in disk galaxies) correlate with the size, mass, star formation rate, and star formation intensity in the host galaxies. From this analysis we investigate various aspects of mechanical energy "feedback"—the return of energy to the interstellar medium from massive star supernovae and stellar winds—on galactic scales. The X-ray observations make use of the unprecedented spatial resolution of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to remove X-ray emission from point sources more accurately than in any previous study and hence obtain the X-ray properties of the diffuse thermal emission alone. Intriguingly, the diffuse X-ray properties of the normal spirals (in both their disks and halos) fall where extrapolation of the trends from the starburst galaxies with superwinds would predict. We demonstrate, using a variety of multiwavelength star formation rate and intensity indicators, that the luminosity of diffuse X-ray emission in the disk (and, where detected, in the halo) is directly proportional to the rate of mechanical energy feedback from massive stars in the host galaxies. Accretion of gas from the intergalactic medium (IGM) does not appear to be a significant contributor to the diffuse X-ray emission in this sample. Nevertheless, with only three nonstarburst normal spiral galaxies it is hard to exclude an accretion-based origin for extraplanar diffuse X-ray emission around normal star-forming galaxies. Larger galaxies tend to have more extended X-ray-emitting halos, but galaxy mass appears to play no role in determining the properties of the disk or extraplanar X-ray-emitting plasma. The combination of these luminosity and size correlations leads to a correlation between the surface brightness of the diffuse X-ray emission and the mean star formation rate per unit area in the disk (calculated from the far-infrared luminosity and the optical size of the galaxy, LFIR/D). Further observational work of this form will allow empirical constraints to be made on the critical star formation rate per unit disk area necessary to blow hot gas out of the disk into the halo. We show that a minor generalization of standard superbubble theory directly predicts a critical star formation rate per unit area for superbubble blowout from the disk and by extension for superwinds to blow out of the gaseous halos of their host galaxy. At present there are a variety of poorly known parameters in this theory that complicate comparison between observation and theory, making it impossible to assess the quantitative accuracy of standard superbubble blowout theory. We argue that the crucial spatial region around a galaxy that controls whether gas in starburst-driven superwinds will escape into the IGM is not the outer halo ~100 kpc from the host galaxy, but the inner few halo scale heights, within ~20 kpc of the galaxy plane. Given the properties of the gaseous halos we observe, superwind outflows from disk galaxies of mass M ~ 1010-1011 M☉ should still eject some fraction of their material into the IGM.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b200c91eb3f7c14e4f1753c6fb39434cf18564f

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Citations in the corpus

X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies - II. Hot interstellar medium (2012, background): “…by guest on 27 July 2018 characteristics are typical of the diffuse emission from normal starburst galaxies and consistent with measurements published by other authors for several galaxies from our sample (e.g. Strickland et al. 2004; Grimes et al. 2005).”
Outflows in Infrared-Luminous Starbursts at z < 0.5. II. Analysis and Discussion (2005, background): “The hot wind outer radius in starburst galaxies apparently increases as galaxy size and mass increase (Strickland et al. 2004).”
The warm ionized medium in spiral galaxies (2009, methodology): “For galaxies with strong starburst activity this is well supported by observations (see, e.g., Cecil et al., 2002; Strickland et al., 2004a,b; Veilleux et al., 2005) and described well by theory and numerical modeling (e.g., Mac Low and Ferrara, 1999).”
DUST OBSCURATION AND METALLICITY AT HIGH REDSHIFT: NEW INFERENCES FROM UV, Hα, AND 8 μm OBSERVATIONS OF z ∼ 2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2010, background): “The X-ray emission in starburst galaxies arises primarily from shock-heated outflowing gas (Strickland et al. 2004; Grimes et al. 2005, 2006) and high-mass X-ray binaries (Ghosh & White 2001), both of which should be sensitive to star formation on relatively short timescales (≃ 70 Myr) that are…”
THE STRUCTURE AND KINEMATICS OF THE CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM FROM FAR-ULTRAVIOLET SPECTRA OF z ≃ 2–3 GALAXIES (2010, background): “…starburst galaxies in the local universe, where rest-UV spectroscopic studies reveal similarly complex velocity structure and gas in multiple phases (e.g. Heckman et al. 1990; Lehnert & Heckman 1996; Martin 1999; Strickland et al. 2004; Schwartz et al. 2006; Grimes et al. 2009; Chen et al. 2010).”
A 2 Millimeter Spectral Line Survey of the Starburst Galaxy NGC 253 (2006, background): “In fact, most of the overall IR luminosity of this galaxy (LIR ¼ 2:1 ; 1010 L , SFRIR ¼ 3:6M yr 1, Strickland et al. 2004) stems from the regions of intense massive star formation within its central few hundred parsecs.”
A Census of Optical and Near-Infrared Selected Star-forming and Passively Evolving Galaxies at Redshift z ~ 2 (2005, background): “The X-ray luminosity of local non-active galaxies results primarily from high mass X-ray binaries, supernovae, and diffuse hot gas (e.g., Grimm et al. 2002; Strickland et al. 2004); all of these sources of X-ray emission are related to the star formation activity on timescales of .”
THREE-DIMENSIONAL INTEGRAL FIELD OBSERVATIONS OF 10 GALACTIC WINDS. I. EXTENDED PHASE (≳10 Myr) OF MASS/ENERGY INJECTION BEFORE THE WIND BLOWS (2010, background): “The line ratio maps indicate harder line ratios on the western side of the southern lobe, coincident with the x-ray emitting gas presented by Strickland et al. (2004b).”
The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z≳2 (2006, background): “…referred to as “feedback” from star formation activity) are a ubiquitous feature of starburst galaxies at low (e.g. Heckman et al. 1990; Lehnert & Heckman 1996; Martin 1999; Strickland et al. 2004, among many others) and high (Pettini et al. 2001; Shapley et al. 2003; Smail et al. 2003) redshifts.”
Three-Dimensional Simulations of a Starburst-driven Galactic Wind (2008, background): “…provided clues to the nature of the soft X-ray emission seen in galactic winds, such as a close spatial correlation between the soft X-ray and H emission in the wind (e.g., Strickland et al. 2004a), which is suggestive of a physical relationship between filaments and the production of soft X-rays.”
OBSERVATIONS OF STARBURST GALAXIES WITH FAR-ULTRAVIOLET SPECTROGRAPHIC EXPLORER: GALACTIC FEEDBACK IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2009, background): “Studies of the outflows in star-forming galaxies are complicated by their multiphase nature (Strickland et al. 2004).”
Structural Parameters of Thin and Thick Disks in Edge-on Disk Galaxies (2005, background): “Mayer & Moore (2004) use the baryonic TF relation to claim that dwarf galaxies do not suffer large removal of baryons, while Strickland et al. (2004) observe X-ray halos around massive star-forming galaxies (M 1010 1011 M ) that suggest they must have ejected at least some material.”
THE PERSISTENCE OF COOL GALACTIC WINDS IN HIGH STELLAR MASS GALAXIES BETWEEN z ∼ 1.4 AND ∼1 (2009, background): “Because the existence of and a precise value for a strict threshold ΣSFR for driving outflows have not yet been observationally established (see, e.g., Strickland et al. 2004), it is interesting to search below the suggested threshold for evidence of winds.”
ABSORPTION-LINE PROBES OF THE PREVALENCE AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS IN PRESENT-DAY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2010, background): “Imaging of the Hα and soft X-ray emission shows that this wind geometry is common in starburst galaxies (e.g., Lehnert & Heckman 1996; Strickland et al. 2004).”
An origin for multiphase gas in galactic winds and haloes (2015, background): “The additional complications made clear by the beautiful X-ray image of the frustum from Strickland et al. (2004b) is first the importance of the opening angle Ω — a naive estimate indicates Ω ∼ 0.01 − 0.05 — and second the potential importance of nonspherical areal divergence as the flow expands…”