RADIATION PRESSURE FROM MASSIVE STAR CLUSTERS AS A LAUNCHING MECHANISM FOR SUPER-GALACTIC WINDS

By N. Murray, Brice Ménard, T. Thompson. 2010

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Galactic outflows of cool (∼104 K) gas are ubiquitous in local starburst galaxies and in most high-redshift galaxies. Hot gas from supernovae has long been suspected as the primary driver, but this mechanism suffers from its tendency to destroy the cool gas. We propose a modification of the supernova scenario that overcomes this difficulty. Star formation is observed to take place in clusters. We show that, for L⋆ galaxies, the radiation pressure from clusters with Mcl ≳ 106 M☉ is able to expel the surrounding gas at velocities in excess of the circular velocity vc of the disk galaxy. This cool gas travels above the galactic disk before supernovae erupt in the driving cluster. Once above the disk, the cool outflowing gas is exposed to radiation and hot gas outflows from the galactic disk, which in combination drive it to distances of ∼50 kpc. Because the radiatively driven clouds grow in size as they travel, and because the hot gas is more dilute at large distance, the clouds are less subject to destruction. Therefore, unlike wind-driven clouds, radiatively driven clouds can give rise to the metal absorbers seen in quasar spectra. We identify these cluster-driven winds with large-scale galactic outflows. The maximum cluster mass in a galaxy is an increasing function of the galaxy's gas surface density, so only starburst galaxies are able to drive cold outflows. We find the critical star formation rate for launching large-scale cool outflows to be , in good agreement with observations.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea37d2caceb8e833ab643c1086e9ba0a1b2b169e

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Citations in the corpus

Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “Direct UV radiation from massive young clusters absorbed by dusty gas can impart velocities to molecular clouds that are of order their escape velocities from the gravity of the cluster (Murray et al. 2011).”
The baryonic assembly of dark matter haloes (2011, background): “…density can be derived from the condition that the massive star clusters in which most of the star formation of a galaxy occurs must be able to accelerate gas to velocities exceeding the escape velocity of the galaxy as a whole in order to produce a galactic-scale outflow (Murray et al. 2011).”
How Stellar Feedback Simultaneously Regulates Star Formation and Drives Outflows (2015, methodology): “…all previous models for how momentum deposition drives turbulence (e.g.Krumholz & McKee 2005; Krumholz et al. 2009b; Murray et al. 2010; Ostriker & Shetty 2011; FQH13) and generates outflows (e.g.Murray et al. 2005, 2011; Thompson et al. 2005) have considered only the mean gas surface density.”
THE SINS/zC-SINF SURVEY of z ∼ 2 GALAXY KINEMATICS: OUTFLOW PROPERTIES (2012, background): “Here, we have assumed that energy-driven winds are unimportant and that the bulk of the ram pressure from SNe does not play a strong role until the gas has been lifted out of the disk (see: Murray et al. 2011).”
DIRECT NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF RADIATION PRESSURE-DRIVEN TURBULENCE AND WINDS IN STAR CLUSTERS AND GALACTIC DISKS (2012, background): “Murray et al. (2005) and Murray et al. (2011) argue that radiation pressure is also responsible for launching galactic winds (see also Zhang & Thompson 2012).”
Massive molecular outflows and evidence for AGN feedback from CO observations (2013, background): “…associated with the energy injected into the ISM by SNe explosions, and “momentum driven”, generally associated with radiation pressure from the young stellar population on the dusty clouds (Murray et al. 2005, 2011; Thompson et al. 2005; Oppenheimer & Davé 2006, 2008; Hopkins et al. 2012).”
Ionized gas outflows and global kinematics of low-z luminous star-forming galaxies (2014, background): “…massive star formation and/or feeding of central black holes would expel the surrounding interstellar medium as a consequence of the mechanical and radiative energy liberated, generating strong outflows (di Matteo et al. 2005;Hopkins et al. 2012; Murray et al. 2011; Ostriker & Shetty 2011).”
An origin for multiphase gas in galactic winds and haloes (2015, background): “…cold cloud acceleration have also been suggested, including momentum deposition by supernovae, the radiation pressure of starlight on dust grains (Murray et al. 2005, 2010, 2011; Hopkins et al. 2012; Zhang & Thompson 2012; Krumholz & Thompson 2013; Davis et al. 2014; Thompson & Krumholz 2014;…”
TOWARD A COMPLETE ACCOUNTING OF ENERGY AND MOMENTUM FROM STELLAR FEEDBACK IN GALAXY FORMATION SIMULATIONS (2012, methodology): “…is nature, acting only in the local resolution elements surrounding young stars, and therefore does not account for continuous acceleration of gas far outside of galactic disks, as recently proposed by Murray et al. (2011), and modelled in the radiative transfer simulations by Wise et al. (2012).”
EVIDENCE FOR UBIQUITOUS COLLIMATED GALACTIC-SCALE OUTFLOWS ALONG THE STAR-FORMING SEQUENCE AT z ∼ 0.5 (2013, background): “Beginning with McKee & Ostriker (1977), and most recently in Murray et al. (2011), theoretical studies have predicted that a “threshold” ΣSFR must be met in order for a galaxy to launch a large-scale wind.”
THE LONG LIVES OF GIANT CLUMPS AND THE BIRTH OF OUTFLOWS IN GAS-RICH GALAXIES AT HIGH REDSHIFT (2013, background): “…from young stars by photons is an efficient process to affect dense gas structures even before supernovae explode (Murray et al. 2010), and this has been suggested to rapidly disrupt the giant clumps of high-redshift galaxies where high gas densities could trap the photons (Murray et al. 2011).”