Accretion of gas on to nearby spiral galaxies

By Filippo Fraternali, J. Binney. 2008

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present evidence for cosmological gas accretion onto spiral galaxies in the local universe. The accretion is seen through its effects on the dynamics of the extra-planar neutral gas. The accretion rates that we estimate for two nearby spiral galaxies are of the order of their star formation rates. Our model shows that most of the extra-planar gas is produced by supernova feedback (galactic fountain) and only 10 20% comes from accretion. The accreting material must have low specific angular momentum about the disc’s spin axis, although the magnitude of the specific angular-momentum vector can be higher. We also explore the effects of a hot corona on the dynamics of the extra-planar gas and find that it is unlikely to be responsible for the observed kinematical pattern and the source of accreted gas. However, the interaction with the fountain flow should profoundly affect the hydrodynamics of the corona.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec8f7dea813a607a6511ffcb575068c501fb58b2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• The Milky Way’s stellar disk (2013, background): “…the galactic disk provides useful and new constraints on the extensive body of chemical evolution models of the disk that has been developed over the last two decades (e.g., Matteucci & Francois 1989; Prantzos & Aubert 1995; Chiappini et al. 2001; Fraternali & Binney 2008; Marinacci et al. 2011).”
• CONSTRAINING THE MILKY WAY'S HOT GAS HALO WITH O vii AND O viii EMISSION LINES (2014, background): “The upper limits of these accretion rates are similar to simulated accretion rates of halo gas around Milky Way analogs (Fraternali & Binney 2008).”
• Hierarchical formation of bulgeless galaxies – II. Redistribution of angular momentum via galactic fountains (2011, background): “Hydrodynamical simulations of these local galactic fountains have shown that both drag and accretion into clouds can efficiently transfer angular momentum between the galactic corona and gas outflows (Fraternali & Binney 2008; Marinacci et al. 2011).”
• The Circumgalactic Medium (2017, background): “Accretion may also be seeded by gas ejected from the disk, as in the “galactic fountain” or “precipitation” model (Fraternali & Binney 2008; Voit et al. 2015b, e.g.,).”
• A Global Model for Circumgalactic and Cluster-core Precipitation (2016, background): “1 keV, then inhomogeneities in the distribution of metals will promote thermal instability and condensation of the more highly enriched gas (e.g., Fraternali & Binney 2008; Marinacci et al. 2010; Oppenheimer et al. 2010).”
• Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “Isolated spirals are able to sustain a nearly constant star formation for a long time, possibly with the contribution of the so called “cosmological fountain” effect (Fraternali & Binney 2008; Fraternali 2014).”
• THE STRUCTURE OF THE MILKY WAY'S HOT GAS HALO (2013, unknown): “For a solar metallicity halo, the accretion rate is similar to modeled accretion rates of similar mass spiral galaxies (Fraternali & Binney 2008).”
• Cold gas accretion in galaxies (2008, background): “Fraternali & Binney (2008) [40] have explored this possibility by including accretion of low angular momentum gas from the IGM in their models, and have calculated the amount of accreting material necessary to reproduce the observations of NGC 891 and NGC 2403.”
• Chemical evolution with radial mixing (2008, background): “However, observations suggest that neutral gas above the plane is actually flowing inwards rather than outwards, presumable as a result of interaction with the corona (Fraternali & Binney 2008).”
• The H i Distribution of the Milky Way (2009, unknown): “…useful also at R > 35 kpc. Comparing this finding with the distribution of the anomalous gas phase in a few other galaxies (e.g., Fraternali 2008, Fraternali & Binney 2008), it would be consistent if the Milky Way CNM and WNM disks are also surrounded by a patchy and highly turbulent halo medium.”
• Gaseous Galaxy Halos (2012, background): “A combination of infalling fuel and feedback can successfully model the lagging rotation with z-height found for numerous galaxies (Fraternali & Binney, 2008; Marinacci et al., 2011).”
• The ATLAS3D project - XIV. The extent and kinematics of the molecular gas in early-type galaxies (2012, background): “Spiral galaxies have had their star-forming gas in situ for many gigayears (even if it is also being topped up externally; e.g. Fraternali & Binney 2008).”
• SDSS IV MaNGA – metallicity and nitrogen abundance gradients in local galaxies (2017, background): “The current theoretical framework of galaxy evolution requires galaxies to be continuously fed by cosmological gas accretion onto their host dark matter haloes (Fraternali & Binney 2008; Sánchez Almeida et al. 2014).”