Numerical Models of Starburst Galaxies: Galactic Winds and Entrained Gas

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  • March 20, 2019
Creator
  • Tanner, Ryan
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
  • My three-dimensional hydro-dynamical simulations of starbursts examine the formation of starburst-driven superbubbles over a range of driving luminosities and mass loadings that determine superbubble growth and wind velocity; floors of both 10 and 10^4 K are considered. From this I determine the relationship between the velocity of a galactic wind and the characteristics of the starburst. I find a threshold for the formation of a wind, above which the wind speed is not affected by grid resolution or the temperature floor of the radiative cooling employed. Optically bright filaments form at the edge of merging superbubbles, or where a cold dense cloud has been disrupted by the wind. Filaments formed by merging superbubbles will persist and grow to >400 pc in length if anchored to and fed from a star forming complex. For galaxies viewed edge on I use total emission from the superbubble to infer the wind velocity and starburst properties such as thermalization efficiency and mass loading factor. Using synthetic absorption profiles I probe different temperature regimes and measure the velocity of the cold, warm and hot gas phases. I find that the cold and warm gas entrained in the wind move at a much lower velocity than the hot gas, with some of the cold gas in the filaments hardly moving with respect to the galaxy. The absorption profiles show that the velocity of the hot galactic outflow does not depend on the star formation rate (SFR), but the velocity of the warm gas does. The velocity of the warm gas scales as SFR^delta until the wind velocity reaches 80 % of the analytic terminal wind speed. The value of delta depends on the atomic ionization with a lower value for low ionization, and a higher value for higher ionization.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Heitsch, Fabian
  • Cecil, Gerald
  • Evans, Charles
  • Reichart, Daniel
  • Iliadis, Christian
Degree
  • Doctor of Philosophy
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2016
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