Mapping Large-Scale Gaseous Outflows in Ultraluminous Galaxies with Keck II ESI Spectra: Variations in Outflow Velocity with Galactic Mass

By Crystal L. Martin. 2004

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Measurements of interstellar Na I λλ5890, 5896 absorption lines in 18 ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIGs) have been combined with published Na I data, to reassess the dependence of galactic outflow speeds on starburst luminosity and galactic mass. The Doppler shifts reveal outflows of relatively cool gas in 15 of 18 ULIGs with an average outflow speed at the line center of 330 ± 100 km s-1. The relation between outflow speed and star formation rate (SFR), defined by the distribution's upper envelope over 4 orders of magnitude in SFR, demonstrates that winds from more luminous starbursts accelerate interstellar gas to higher speeds roughly as v ∝ SFR0.35. This result is surprising since, in the traditional model for starburst-driven winds, these relatively cool gas clouds are accelerated by the ram pressure of a hot, supernova-heated wind that exhibits weak (if any) X-ray temperature variation with increasing galactic mass. The lack of evidence for much hotter winds is partly a sensitivity issue, but the Na I velocities in ultraluminous starbursts actually are consistent with acceleration by the tepid wind, indicating that a hotter component is unlikely to dominate the momentum flux. The Na I velocities in the dwarf starburst winds do not reach the terminal velocity of a hot wind at the measured temperature of kT ~ 0.73 keV, a result that could be interpreted simply as evidence that the hot superbubbles are too confined in dwarf starbursts to generate a free-flowing wind. A dynamically motivated scenario, however, is that the dwarf starburst winds simply lack enough momentum to accelerate the clouds to the velocity of the hot wind. Among the subsample of starbursts with well-constrained dynamical masses, the terminal outflow velocities are always found to approach the galactic escape velocity. Motivated by a similar scaling relation for stellar winds, the galactic Eddington luminosity for dusty starbursts is shown to be within the range measured for ULIGs. If radiation pressure on dust grains, coupled to the cool wind, is indeed important for galactic wind dynamics, then feedback is stronger in massive galaxies than previously thought, helping shape the high-mass end of the galaxy luminosity function. Regardless of the nature of the acceleration mechanism in ULIGs, the mass flux of cool gas estimated from these data demonstrates that starburst-driven winds transport significant gas during the assembly stage of field elliptical galaxies, a factor that helps explain the rapid decline in SFR in these systems inferred from elemental abundance ratios.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• Cosmological simulations of intergalactic medium enrichment from galactic outflows (2006, methodology): “A feasible physical scenario for the wind driving mechanism is deduced by noting that the observed scaling are well explained by a momentum-driven wind model (Martin 2005), such as that outlined in Murray, Quatert, & Thompson (2005).”
• MUFASA: Galaxy Formation Simulations With Meshless Hydrodynamics (2016, background): “The resulting wind launch velocities are typically∼ 2−3vc, which is comparable to the observed maximum outflow speeds in low-redshift (Martin 2005) and high-redshift (Steidel et al. 2010) galaxies.”
• SHORT-LIVED STAR-FORMING GIANT CLUMPS IN COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS OF z ≈ 2 DISKS (2010, result): “The scalings of the momentum-driven winds are in accordance with observational evidence for the scalings of galactic winds (e.g. Martin 2005; Rupke et al. 2005).”
• Evidence of strong quasar feedback in the early Universe (2012, background): “Theoretical models predict that starburst-driven winds cannot reach velocities higher than 600 km s−1 (Martin 2005; Thacker et al. 2006), therefore the high velocities observed in the [CII] wings of J1148+5251 strongly favor radiation pressure from the quasar nucleus as the main driving mechanism…”
• Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “Because of the expected strong correlations between mass loading, velocity, and temperature, this scenario predicts a correlation between the observed wind velocities and the local escape velocity, as well as faster velocities for the lower column densities (Martin 2005; Rupke et al. 2005c).”
• The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, background): “E-mail: anglesd@northwestern.edu bursts to high redshift galaxies (Martin 2005; Rupke et al. 2005; Veilleux et al. 2005; Weiner et al. 2009; Steidel et al. 2010; Martin et al. 2012; Newman et al. 2012; Heckman et al. 2015).”
• Ionized gas outflows and global kinematics of low-z luminous star-forming galaxies (2014, background): “Martin (2005) does not find any correlation between the outflowing velocity of the neutral gas and the dynamical phase of the system.”
• THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTION AT z = 4–8: A STEEPENING LOW-MASS-END SLOPE WITH INCREASING REDSHIFT (2015, unknown): “man et al. 1990; Martin 2005).”
• Feedback and recycled wind accretion: assembling the z= 0 galaxy mass function (2009, methodology): “Momentum-driven Winds (vzw): The momentum-driven wind model uses the scalings of Murray, Quatert, & Thompson (2005) based on the galaxy velocity dispersion (σ), and matches the observed trends of vwind by Martin (2005a).”
• Mass, metal, and energy feedback in cosmological simulations (2007, background): “Observations by Martin (2005a) and Rupke, Veilleux & Sanders (2005) indicate vwind is proportional to circular velocity (where vcirc ∼ σ) over a wide range of galaxies ranging from dwarf starbursts to ULIRG’s.”
• Massive molecular outflows and evidence for AGN feedback from CO observations (2013, background): “…both locally (e.g. Rupke & Veilleux 2011, 2013b; Müller-Sánchez et al. 2011; Mullaney et al. 2013; Emonts et al. 2005; Morganti et al. 2003, 2005; Martin 2005; Soto et al. 2012; Rodríguez Zaurín et al. 2013) and at high redshift (e.g. Harrison et al. 2012; Cano-Díaz et al. 2012; Diamond-Stanic…”
• Neutral hydrogen in galaxy haloes at the peak of the cosmic star formation history (2014, background): “At the same time, powerful outflows are ubiquitous around star-forming galaxies at all redshifts (e.g., Shapley et al. 2003; Martin 2005; Weiner et al. 2009; Steidel et al. 2010; Newman et al. 2012; Jones et al. 2012; Rubin et al. 2014b) and are believed to play a major role in slowing down the…”
• The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, methodology): “This method is commonly used in optical and near-UV lines such as Ca ii, Na i, Mg ii, and Fe ii (Martin 2005; Kornei et al. 2012; Bordoloi et al. 2011; Rubin et al. 2014) to study outflows from galaxies out to z ∼ 1, in UV lines for low-redshift star-forming galaxies (Henry et al. 2015; Heckman et…”
• TOWARD A COMPLETE ACCOUNTING OF ENERGY AND MOMENTUM FROM STELLAR FEEDBACK IN GALAXY FORMATION SIMULATIONS (2012, background): “…(Mac Low & Klessen 2004; McKee & Ostriker 2007, and references therein), driving turbulence (Kim et al. 2001; de Avillez & Breitschwerdt 2004; Joung & Mac Low 2006; Agertz et al. 2009a; Tamburro et al. 2009) and generating galactic scale outflows (Martin 1999, 2005; Oppenheimer & Davé 2006).”
• Stellar Feedback in Galaxies and the Origin of Galaxy-scale Winds (2011, background): “Direct observations, while uncertain, tend to favour velocity and Ṁwind scalings similar to this constraint for the bulk of the outflowing gas (Martin 2005; Rupke, Veilleux & Sanders 2005; Weiner et al. 2009).”
• ABSORPTION-LINE PROBES OF THE PREVALENCE AND PROPERTIES OF OUTFLOWS IN PRESENT-DAY STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “Martin (2005) find EW(Na I) = 1/3 EW(Mg I) based on an analysis of stellar spectra.”
• A characteristic scale for cold gas (2016, result): “We note that suprathermal line widths are also typical in galaxy winds (e. g. Martin, 2005; Schwartz & Martin, 2004), which is also consistent with shattering.”
• Outflows in Active Galactic Nucleus/Starburst-Composite Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies (2005, background): “…why this is so, although there are several possible explanations: (1) the entrainment of all available gas clouds, (2) a velocity threshold due to the finite velocity of the hot wind (Murray et al. 2005; Martin 2005), or (3) a reduction in thermalization efficiency at high SFR, luminosity, and vc.”
• THE MULTIPHASE STRUCTURE AND POWER SOURCES OF GALACTIC WINDS IN MAJOR MERGERS (2013, methodology): “A neutral outflow was discovered in this system via nuclear spectra (Heckman et al. 2000; Martin 2005; Rupke et al. 2005c), and it is visible in molecular gas, as well (Sturm et al. 2011).”
• Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds (2012, methodology): “Observations by Martin (2005) (see their Fig.”