THE SYSTEMATIC PROPERTIES OF THE WARM PHASE OF STARBURST-DRIVEN GALACTIC WINDS

By T. Heckman, R. Alexandroff, S. Borthakur, R. Overzier, C. Leitherer. 2015

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Using ultraviolet absorption lines, we analyze the systematic properties of the warm ionized phase of starburst-driven winds in a sample of 39 low-redshift objects that spans broad ranges in starburst and galaxy properties. Total column densities for the outflows are ∼1021 cm−2. The outflow velocity (vout) correlates only weakly with the galaxy stellar mass ( M * ?> ), or circular velocity (vcir), but strongly with both SFR and SFR/area. The normalized outflow velocity ( v out / v cir ?> ) correlates well with both SFR/area and SFR/ M * ?> . The estimated outflow rates of warm ionized gas ( M ˙ ?> ) are ∼1–4 times the SFR, and the ratio M ˙ / SFR ?> does not correlate with vout. We show that a model of a population of clouds accelerated by the combined forces of gravity and the momentum flux from the starburst matches the data. We find a threshold value for the ratio of the momentum flux supplied by the starburst to the critical momentum flux needed for the wind to overcome gravity acting on the clouds (Rcrit). For R crit > ?> 10 (strong-outflows) the outflow’s momentum flux is similar to the total momentum flux from the starburst and the outflow velocity exceeds the galaxy escape velocity. Neither of these is the case for the weak outflows ( R crit < ?> 10). For the weak-outflows, the data severely disagree with many prescriptions in numerical simulations or semi-analytic models of galaxy evolution. The agreement is better for the strong outflows, and we advocate the use of Rcrit to guide future prescriptions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bff473e117145e36d904f5580d920737297c0bc1

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Citations in the corpus

Gusty, gaseous flows of FIRE: Galactic winds in cosmological simulations with explicit stellar feedback (2015, result): “Observations generally show that galactic winds are weaker at low redshift (e.g. Heckman 2001; Heckman et al. 2015), which is generally consistent with our results, but in tension with V13.”
How Stellar Feedback Simultaneously Regulates Star Formation and Drives Outflows (2015, background): “…increasing amount of observational evidence for the existence of stellar-feedback-driven outflows (e.g.Lynds & Sandage 1963; Burbidge et al. 1964; Heckman et al. 1990, 2000, 2015; Martin 1996, 1998, 1999, 2005, 2006; Weiner et al. 2009; Steidel et al. 2010; Bordoloi et al. 2011; Martin et al.…”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “The AGN driven wind mass-loading factors are systematically larger than those of starburst driven winds in local star-forming galaxies (Heckman et al. 2015, yellow band in Fig.”
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).”
The impact of star formation feedback on the circumgalactic medium (2016, methodology): “The mass loading factors, η, were chosen to bracket the expected range for star formation feedback as suggested by observations (Martin 1999; Veilleux et al. 2005; Heckman et al. 2015) and cosmological simulations (Muratov et al. 2015).”
The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, background): “…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 al. 2015), or even to examine accretion (Rubin et al. 2012).”
Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “…rotation velocity and velocity dispersion of the ISM in the host galaxy) and scales with the stellar mass following log S = 0.29 log M∗–0.93, where S is in km s−1 and M∗ is in M (Weiner et al. 2006; Kassin et al. 2007), in low-z star-forming galaxies (Heckman et al. 2015; Simons et al. 2015).”