arXiv subjects

Chang-Goo Kim

Publications and source records attributed to Chang-Goo Kim.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies as Extreme Star-forming Environments II: Star Formation and Pressure Balance in HI-Rich UDGs

In addition to occupying the extreme, diffuse tail of the dwarf galaxy population, Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) are themselves a key laboratory in which to study star formation in extreme low-density environments. In the second paper of this series, we compare the spatially resolved star formation activity of 22 HI-selected UDGs and 21 "normal" dwarf galaxies within 120 Mpc to predictions within the pressure-regulated, feedback-modulated (PRFM) theory of star formation. To do so, we employ a joint SED fitting method that allows us to estimate star formation rate and stellar mass surface density from UV-optical imaging. We find that the PRFM framework extends successfully to the UDG regime - although the UDGs in our sample show unusually low star formation rate surface densities given their HI content, this low star formation efficiency can be naturally explained by the diffuse structure of the UDGs. In fact, when cast in the PRFM framework, the relationship between midplane pressure and star formation in the UDG sample is in good agreement not only with the "normal" dwarf reference sample, but also with measurements from more massive galaxies. Our results suggest that despite their low star formation efficiencies, the HI-rich UDGs need not be forming stars in an exotic manner. We also find that the UDGs are likely H$_2$-poor compared even to the overall dwarf population.

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arXiv2022

Photochemistry and Heating/Cooling of the Multiphase Interstellar Medium with UV Radiative Transfer for Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations

We present an efficient heating/cooling method coupled with chemistry and ultraviolet (UV) radiative transfer, which can be applied to numerical simulations of the interstellar medium (ISM). We follow the time-dependent evolution of hydrogen species (H$_2$, H, H$^+$), assume carbon/oxygen species (C, C$^+$, CO, O, and O$^+$) are in formation-destruction balance given the non-steady hydrogen abundances, and include essential heating/cooling processes needed to capture thermodynamics of all ISM phases. UV radiation from discrete point sources and the diffuse background is followed through adaptive ray tracing and a six-ray approximation, respectively, allowing for H$_2$ self-shielding; cosmic ray (CR) heating and ionization are also included. To validate our methods and demonstrate their application for a range of density, metallicity, and radiation field, we conduct a series of tests, including the equilibrium curves of thermal pressure vs. density, the chemical and thermal structure in photo-dissociation regions, H I-to-H$_2$ transitions, and the expansion of H II regions and radiative supernova remnants. Careful treatment of photochemistry and CR ionization is essential for many aspects of ISM physics, including identifying the thermal pressure at which cold and warm neutral phases co-exist. We caution that many current heating and cooling treatments used in galaxy formation simulations do not reproduce the correct thermal pressure and ionization fraction in the neutral ISM. Our new model is implemented in the MHD code Athena and incorporated in the TIGRESS simulation framework, for use in studying the star-forming ISM in a wide range of environments.

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arXiv2022

Ram pressure stripping of the multiphase ISM: a detailed view from TIGRESS simulations

Ram pressure stripping (RPS) is a process that removes the interstellar medium (ISM) quickly, playing a vital role in galaxy evolution. Previous RPS studies have treated the ISM as single-phase or lack the resolution and physical processes to properly capture the full multiphase ISM. To improve this simplification, we introduce an inflowing, hot intracluster medium (ICM) into a self-consistently modeled ISM in a local patch of star-forming galactic disks using the TIGRESS framework. Our simulations reveal that the workings of RPS are not only direct acceleration of the ISM by ICM ram pressure but also mixing-driven momentum transfer involving significant phase transition and radiative cooling. The hot ICM passes through the low-density channels of the porous, multiphase ISM, shreds the cool ISM, and creates mixing layers. The ICM momentum is transferred through the mixing layers while populating the intermediate temperature gas and radiating thermal energy away. The mixed gas extends beyond galactic disks and forms stripped tails that cool back unless the ICM fluxes are large enough to prevent cooling until they escape the simulation domain. The mixing-driven momentum transfer predicts that the more ICM mixes in, the faster the ISM moves, resulting in the anti-correlation of outflow velocity and gas metallicity of the stripped ISM. The compression of the ISM disks due to the ICM ram pressure enhances star formation rates up to 50% compared to the model without ICM. With the ICM ram pressure higher than the disk anchoring pressure, star formation is quenched within ~100 Myr.

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arXiv2022

Pressure-Regulated, Feedback-Modulated Star Formation In Disk Galaxies

The star formation rate (SFR) in galactic disks depends on both the quantity of available interstellar medium (ISM) gas and its physical state. Conversely, the ISM's physical state depends on the SFR, because the "feedback" energy and momentum injected by recently-formed massive stars is crucial to offsetting losses from turbulent dissipation and radiative cooling. The ISM's physical state also responds to the gravitational field that confines it, with increased weight driving higher pressure. In a quasi-steady state, it is expected that the mean total pressure of different thermal phases will match each other, that the component pressures and total pressure will satisfy thermal and dynamical equilibrium requirements, and that the SFR will adjust as needed to provide the requisite stellar radiation and supernova feedback. The pressure-regulated, feedback-modulated (PRFM) theory of the star-forming ISM formalizes these ideas, leading to a prediction that the SFR per unit area, Sigma_SFR, will scale nearly linearly with ISM weight W. In terms of large-scale gas surface density Sigma, stellar plus dark matter density rho_sd, and effective ISM velocity dispersion sigma_eff, an observable weight estimator is W~P_DE=pi G Sigma^2/2+Sigma(2G rho_sd)^{1/2} sigma_eff, and this is predicted to match the total midplane pressure P_tot. Using a suite of multiphase magnetohydrodynamic simulations run with the TIGRESS computational framework, we test the principles of the PRFM model and calibrate the total feedback yield Upsilon_tot = P_tot/Sigma_SFR ~ 1000 km/s, as well as its components. We compare results from TIGRESS to theory, previous numerical simulations, and observations, finding excellent agreement.

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arXiv2021

Effects of Varying Mass Inflows on Star Formation in Nuclear Rings of Barred Galaxies

Observations indicate that the star formation rate (SFR) of nuclear rings varies considerably with time and is sometimes asymmetric rather than being uniform across a ring. To understand what controls temporal and spatial distributions of ring star formation, we run semi-global, hydrodynamic simulations of nuclear rings subject to time-varying and/or asymmetric mass inflow rates. These controlled variations in the inflow lead to variations in the star formation, while the ring orbital period ($18\,{\rm Myr}$) and radius ($600\,{\rm pc}$) remain approximately constant. We find that both the mass inflow rate and supernova feedback affect the ring SFR. An oscillating inflow rate with period $Δτ_\text{in}$ and amplitude 20 causes large-amplitude (a factor of $\gtrsim 5$), quasi-periodic variations of the SFR, when $Δτ_\text{in} \gtrsim 50\,{\rm Myr}$. We find that the time-varying ISM weight and midplane pressure track each other closely, establishing an instantaneous vertical equilibrium. The measured time-varying depletion time is consistent with the prediction from self-regulation theory provided the time delay between star formation and supernova feedback is taken into account. The supernova feedback is responsible only for small-amplitude (a factor of $\sim 2$) fluctuations of the SFR with a timescale $\lesssim 40\,{\rm Myr}$. Asymmetry in the inflow rate does not necessarily lead to asymmetric star formation in nuclear rings. Only when the inflow rate from one dust lane is suddenly increased by a large factor, the rings undergo a transient period of lopsided star formation.

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arXiv2021

Star Formation Regulation and Self-Pollution by Stellar Wind Feedback

Stellar winds contain enough energy to easily disrupt the parent cloud surrounding a nascent star cluster, and for this reason have been considered candidates for regulating star formation. However, direct observations suggest most wind power is lost, and Lancaster21a,b recently proposed that this is due to efficient mixing and cooling processes. Here, we simulate star formation with wind feedback in turbulent, self-gravitating clouds, extending our previous work. Our simulations cover clouds with initial surface density $10^2-10^4$ $M_{\odot} \, {\rm pc}^{-2}$, and show that star formation and residual gas dispersal is complete within 2 - 8 initial cloud free-fall times. The "Efficiently Cooled" model for stellar wind bubble evolution predicts enough energy is lost for the bubbles to become momentum-driven, we find this is satisfied in our simulations. We also find that wind energy losses from turbulent, radiative mixing layers dominate losses by "cloud leakage" over the timescales relevant for star formation. We show that the net star formation efficiency (SFE) in our simulations can be explained by theories that apply wind momentum to disperse cloud gas, allowing for highly inhomogeneous internal cloud structure. For very dense clouds, the SFE is similar to those observed in extreme star-forming environments. Finally, we find that, while self-pollution by wind material is insignificant in cloud conditions with moderate density (only $\lesssim 10^{-4}$ of the stellar mass originated in winds), our simulations with conditions more typical of a super star cluster have star particles that form with as much as 1\% of their mass in wind material.

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arXiv2021

Characterizing mass, momentum, energy and metal outflow rates of multi-phase galactic winds in the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations

We characterize mass, momentum, energy and metal outflow rates of multi-phase galactic winds in a suite of FIRE-2 cosmological "zoom-in" simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. We analyze simulations of low-mass dwarfs, intermediate-mass dwarfs, Milky Way-mass halos, and high-redshift massive halos. Consistent with previous work, we find that dwarfs eject about 100 times more gas from their interstellar medium (ISM) than they form in stars, while this mass "loading factor" drops below one in massive galaxies. Most of the mass is carried by the hot phase ($>10^5$ K) in massive halos and the warm phase ($10^3-10^5$ K) in dwarfs; cold outflows ($<10^3$ K) are negligible except in high-redshift dwarfs. Energy, momentum and metal loading factors from the ISM are of order unity in dwarfs and significantly lower in more massive halos. Hot outflows have $2-5\times$ higher specific energy than needed to escape from the gravitational potential of dwarf halos; indeed, in dwarfs, the mass, momentum, and metal outflow rates increase with radius whereas energy is roughly conserved, indicating swept up halo gas. Burst-averaged mass loading factors tend to be larger during more powerful star formation episodes and when the inner halo is not virialized, but we see effectively no trend with the dense ISM gas fraction. We discuss how our results can guide future controlled numerical experiments that aim to elucidate the key parameters governing galactic winds and the resulting associated preventative feedback.

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arXiv2021

The Origin of Parity Violation in Polarized Dust Emission and Implications for Cosmic Birefringence

Recent measurements of Galactic polarized dust emission have found a nonzero $TB$ signal, a correlation between the total intensity and the $B$-mode polarization component. We present evidence that this parity-odd signal is driven by the relative geometry of the magnetic field and the filamentary interstellar medium in projection. Using neutral hydrogen morphology and Planck polarization data, we find that the angle between intensity structures and the plane-of-sky magnetic field orientation is predictive of the signs of Galactic $TB$ and $EB$. Our results suggest that magnetically misaligned filamentary dust structures introduce nonzero $TB$ and $EB$ correlations in the dust polarization, and that the intrinsic dust $EB$ can be predicted from measurements of dust $TB$ and $TE$ over the same sky mask. We predict correlations between $TE$, $TB$, $EB$, and $EE/BB$, and confirm our predictions using synthetic dust polarization maps from magnetohydrodynamic simulations. We introduce and measure a scale-dependent effective magnetic misalignment angle, $ψ_\ell^{dust} \sim 5^\circ$ for $100 \lesssim \ell \lesssim 500$, and predict a positive intrinsic dust $EB$ with amplitude $\left \lesssim 2.5~μ\mathrm{K^2_{CMB}}$ for the same multipole range at 353 GHz over our sky mask. Both the sign and amplitude of the Galactic $EB$ signal can change with the sky area considered. Our results imply that searches for parity violation in the cosmic microwave background must account for the nonzero Galactic $EB$ and $TB$ signals, necessitating revision of existing analyses of the evidence for cosmic birefringence.

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arXiv2021

Star Formation in Nuclear Rings with the TIGRESS Framework

Nuclear rings are sites of intense star formation at the centers of barred galaxies. To understand what determines the structure and star formation rate (SFR; $\dot{M}_{\rm SF}$) of nuclear rings, we run semi-global, hydrodynamic simulations of nuclear rings subject to constant mass inflow rates $\dot{M}_{\rm in}$. We adopt the TIGRESS framework of Kim \& Ostriker to handle radiative heating and cooling, star formation, and related supernova (SN) feedback. We find that the SN feedback is never strong enough to destroy the ring or quench star formation everywhere in the ring. Under the constant $\dot{M}_{\rm in}$, the ring star formation is very steady and persistent, with the SFR exhibiting only mild temporal fluctuations. The ring SFR is tightly correlated with the inflow rate as $\dot{M}_{\rm SF}\approx 0.8\dot{M}_{\rm in}$, for a range of $\dot{M}_{\rm in}=0.125-8\,M_\odot\,{\rm yr}^{-1}$. Within the ring, vertical dynamical equilibrium is maintained, with the midplane pressure (powered by SN feedback) balancing the weight of the overlying gas. The SFR surface density is correlated nearly linearly with the midplane pressure, as predicted by the pressure-regulated, feedback-modulated star formation theory. Based on our results, we argue that the ring SFR is causally controlled by $\dot{M}_\text{in}$, while the ring gas mass adapts to the SFR to maintain the vertical dynamical equilibrium under the gravitational field arising from both gas and stars.

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arXiv2021

Efficiently Cooled Stellar Wind Bubbles in Turbulent Clouds I. Fractal Theory and Application to Star-Forming Clouds

Winds from massive stars have velocities of 1000 km/s or more, and produce hot, high pressure gas when they shock. We develop a theory for the evolution of bubbles driven by the collective winds from star clusters early in their lifetimes, which involves interaction with the turbulent, dense interstellar medium of the surrounding natal molecular cloud. A key feature is the fractal nature of the hot bubble's surface. The large area of this interface with surrounding denser gas strongly enhances energy losses from the hot interior, enabled by turbulent mixing and subsequent cooling at temperatures T = 10^4-10^5 K where radiation is maximally efficient. Due to the extreme cooling, the bubble radius scales differently (R ~ t^1/2) from the classical Weaver77 solution, and has expansion velocity and momentum lower by factors of 10-10^2 at given R, with pressure lower by factors of 10^2 - 10^3. Our theory explains the weak X-ray emission and low shell expansion velocities of observed sources. We discuss further implications of our theory for observations of the hot bubbles and cooled expanding shells created by stellar winds, and for predictions of feedback-regulated star formation in a range of environments. In a companion paper, we validate our theory with a suite of hydrodynamic simulations.

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arXiv2021

Efficiently Cooled Stellar Wind Bubbles in Turbulent Clouds II. Validation of Theory with Hydrodynamic Simulations

In a companion paper, we develop a theory for the evolution of stellar wind driven bubbles in dense, turbulent clouds. This theory proposes that turbulent mixing at a fractal bubble-shell interface leads to highly efficient cooling, in which the vast majority of the input wind energy is radiated away. This energy loss renders the majority of the bubble evolution momentum-driven rather than energy-driven, with expansion velocities and pressures orders of magnitude lower than in the classical Weaver77 solution. In this paper, we validate our theory with three-dimensional, hydrodynamic simulations. We show that extreme cooling is not only possible, but is generic to star formation in turbulent clouds over more than three orders of magnitude in density. We quantify the few free parameters in our theory, and show that the momentum exceeds the wind input rate by only a factor ~ 1.2-4. We verify that the bubble/cloud interface is a fractal with dimension ~ 2.5-2.7. The measured turbulent amplitude (v_t ~ 200-400 km/s) in the hot gas near the interface is shown to be consistent with theoretical requirements for turbulent diffusion to efficiently mix and radiate away most of the wind energy. The fraction of energy remaining after cooling is only 1-Θ~ 0.1-0.01, decreasing with time, explaining observations that indicate low hot-gas content and weak dynamical effects of stellar winds.

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arXiv2020

Radiative Supernova Remnants and Supernova Feedback

Supernova (SN) explosions are a major feedback mechanism regulating star formation in galaxies through their momentum input. We review the observations of SNRs in radiative stages in the Milky Way to validate the theoretical results on the momentum/energy injection from a single SN explosion. For seven SNRs where we can observe fast-expanding, atomic radiative shells, we show that the shell momentum inferred from HI 21 cm line observations is in the range of (0.5--4.5)$\times 10^5$ $M_\odot$ km s$^{-1}$. In two SNRs (W44 and IC 443), shocked molecular gas with momentum comparable to that of the atomic SNR shells has been also observed. We compare the momentum and kinetic/thermal energy of these seven SNRs with the results from 1D and 3D numerical simulations. The observation-based momentum and kinetic energy agree well with the expected momentum/energy input from an SN explosion of $\sim 10^{51}$ erg. It is much more difficult to use data/model comparisons of thermal energy to constrain the initial explosion energy, however, due to rapid cooling and complex physics at the hot/cool interface in radiative SNRs. We discuss the observational and theoretical uncertainties of these global parameters and explosion energy estimates for SNRs in complex environments.

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arXiv2020

First results from SMAUG: The need for preventative stellar feedback and improved baryon cycling in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation

Semi-analytic models (SAMs) are a promising means of tracking the physical processes associated with galaxy formation, but many of their approximations have not been rigorously tested. As part of the SMAUG (Simulating Multiscale Astrophysics to Understand Galaxies) project, we compare predictions from the FIRE-2 hydrodynamical "zoom-in" simulations to those from the Santa Cruz SAM run on the same halo merger trees, with an emphasis on the global mass flow cycle. Our study includes 13 halos spanning low-mass dwarfs (M_vir~10^10 M_sun at z=0), intermediate-mass dwarfs (M_vir~10^11 M_sun) and Milky Way-mass galaxies (M_vir~10^12 M_sun). The SAM and FIRE-2 predictions agree relatively well with each other in terms of stellar and interstellar mass, but differ dramatically on circumgalactic mass (the SAM is lower than FIRE-2 by ~3 orders of magnitude for dwarfs). Strikingly, the SAM predicts higher gas accretion rates for dwarfs compared to FIRE-2 by factors of ~10-100, and this is compensated for with higher mass outflow rates in the SAM. We argue that the most severe model discrepancies are caused by the lack of preventative stellar feedback and the assumptions for halo gas cooling and recycling in the SAM. As a first step towards resolving these model tensions, we present a simple yet promising new preventative stellar feedback model in which the energy carried by supernova-driven winds is allowed to heat some fraction of gas outside of halos to at least the virial temperature such that accretion is suppressed.

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arXiv2020

First results from SMAUG: Insights into star formation conditions from spatially-resolved ISM properties in TNG50

Physical and chemical properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) at sub-galactic ($\sim$kpc) scales play an indispensable role in controlling the ability of gas to form stars. As part of the SMAUG (Simulating Multiscale Astrophysics to Understand Galaxies) project, in this paper, we use the TNG50 cosmological simulation to explore the physical parameter space of 8 resolved ISM properties in star-forming regions to constrain the areas of this hyperspace over which most star-forming environments exist. We deconstruct our simulated galaxies spanning a wide range of mass (M$_\star = 10^{7-11}$ M$_\odot$) and redshift ($0 \leq z \leq 3$) into kpc-sized regions, and statistically analyze the gas/stellar surface densities, gas metallicity, vertical stellar velocity dispersion, epicyclic frequency and dark-matter volumetric density representative of each region in the context of their star formation activity and galactic environment (radial galactocentric location). By examining the star formation rate (SFR) weighted distributions of these properties, we show that stars primarily form in two spatially distinct environmental regimes, which are brought about by an underlying bi-component radial SFR surface density profile in galaxies. We examine how the relative prominence of these two regimes depends on host galaxy mass and cosmic time. We also compare our findings with those from integral field spectroscopy observations and achieve a good overall agreement. Further, using dimensionality reduction, we characterise the aforementioned hyperspace to reveal a high-degree of multicollinearity in relationships amongst ISM properties that drive the distribution of star formation at kpc-scales. Based on this, we show that a reduced 3D representation underpinned by a multi-variate radius relationship is sufficient to capture most of the variance in the original 8D space.

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arXiv2020

A Framework for Multiphase Galactic Wind Launching using TIGRESS

Galactic outflows have density, temperature, and velocity variations at least as large as that of the multiphase, turbulent interstellar medium (ISM) from which they originate. We have conducted a suite of parsec-resolution numerical simulations using the TIGRESS framework, in which outflows emerge as a consequence of interaction between supernovae (SNe) and the star-forming ISM. The outflowing gas is characterized by two distinct thermal phases, cool (T<10^4 K) and hot (T>10^6 K), with most mass carried by the cool phase and most energy and newly-injected metals carried by the hot phase. Both components have a broad distribution of outflow velocity, and especially for cool gas this implies a varying fraction of escaping material depending on the halo potential. Informed by the TIGRESS results, we develop straightforward analytic formulae for the joint probability density functions (PDFs) of mass, momentum, energy, and metal loading as distributions in outflow velocity and sound speed. The model PDFs have only two parameters, SFR surface density Σ_SFR and the metallicity of the ISM, and fully capture the behavior of the original TIGRESS simulation PDFs over Σ_SFR~(10^{-4},1)M_sun/kpc^2/yr. Employing PDFs from resolved simulations will enable galaxy formation subgrid model implementations with wind velocity and temperature (as well as total loading factors) that are based on theoretical predictions rather than empirical tuning. This is a critical step to incorporate advances from TIGRESS and other high-resolution simulations in future cosmological hydrodynamics and semi-analytic galaxy formation models. We release a python package to prototype our model and to ease its implementation.

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arXiv2020

The environmental dependence of the X_CO conversion factor

CO is the most widely used observational tracer of molecular gas. The observable CO luminosity is translated to H_2 mass via a conversion factor, X_CO, which is a source of uncertainty and bias. Despite variations in X_CO, the empirically-determined solar neighborhood value is often applied across different galactic environments. To improve understanding of X_CO, we employ 3D magnetohydrodynamics simulations of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galactic disks with a large range of gas surface densities, allowing for varying metallicity, far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation, and cosmic ray ionization rate (CRIR). With the TIGRESS simulation framework we model the three-phase ISM with self-consistent star formation and feedback, and post-process outputs with chemistry and radiation transfer to generate synthetic CO(1--0) and (2--1) maps. Our models reproduce the observed CO excitation temperatures, line-widths, and line ratios in nearby disk galaxies. X_CO decreases with increasing metallicity, with a power-law slope of -0.8 for the (1--0) line and -0.5 for the (2--1) line. X_CO also decreases at higher CRIR, and is insensitive to the FUV radiation. As density increases, X_CO first decreases due to increasing excitation temperature, and then increases when the emission is fully saturated. We provide fits between X_CO and observable quantities such as the line ratio, peak antenna temperature, and line brightness, which probe local gas conditions. These fits, which allow for varying beam size, may be used in observations to calibrate out systematic biases. We also provide estimates of the CO-dark H_2 fraction at different gas surface densities, observational sensitivities, and beam sizes.

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arXiv2020

First results from SMAUG: Characterization of Multiphase Galactic Outflows from a Suite of Local Star-Forming Galactic Disk Simulations

Large scale outflows in star-forming galaxies are observed to be ubiquitous, and are a key aspect of theoretical modeling of galactic evolution in a cosmological context, the focus of the SMAUG (Simulating Multiscale Astrophysics to Understand Galaxies) project. Gas blown out from galactic disks, similar to gas within galaxies, consists of multiple phases with large contrasts of density, temperature, and other properties. To study multiphase outflows as emergent phenomena, we run a suite of ~pc-resolution local galactic disk simulations using the TIGRESS framework. Explicit modeling of the interstellar medium (ISM), including star formation and self-consistent radiative heating plus supernova feedback, regulates ISM properties and drives the outflow. We investigate the scaling of outflow mass, momentum, energy, and metal loading factors with galactic disk properties, including star formation rate (SFR) surface density (Σ_SFR~10^{-4}-1 M_sun/kpc^2/yr), gas surface density (~1-100 M_sun/pc^2), and total midplane pressure (or weight) (~10^3-10^6 k_B cm^{-3} K). The main components of outflowing gas are mass-delivering cool gas (T~10^4 K) and energy/metal-delivering hot gas (T~10^6 K). Cool mass outflow rates measured at outflow launch points (one or two scale heights) are 1-100 times the SFR (decreasing with Σ_SFR), although in massive galaxies most mass falls back due to insufficient outflow velocity. The hot galactic outflow carries mass comparable to 10% of the SFR, together with 10-20% of the energy and 30-60% of the metal mass injected by SN feedback. The characteristic outflow velocities of both phases scale very weakly with SFR, as v_out \propto Σ_SFR^{0.1~0.2}, consistent with observations. Importantly, our analysis demonstrates that in any physically-motivated cosmological wind model, it is crucial to include at least two distinct thermal wind components.

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arXiv2020

Ly-alpha Radiative Transfer: Monte-Carlo Simulation of the Wouthuysen-Field Effect

A three-dimensional Monte Carlo Ly-alpha radiative transfer (RT) code, named LaRT, is developed to study the Ly-alpha RT and the Wouthuysen-Field (WF) effect. Using the code, we calculate the line profile of Ly-alpha radiation within the multiphase interstellar medium (ISM), with a particular emphasis on gas at low densities. We show that the WF effect is in action: the central portion of the line profile tends to approach a small slice of the Planck function with a color temperature equal to the kinetic temperature of the gas, even in a system with an optical thickness as low as tau_0~100-500. We also investigate the effects of the turbulent motion of the ISM on the emergent Ly-alpha spectrum and color temperature. The turbulent motion broadens, as generally expected, the emergent spectrum, but the color temperature is not affected by the turbulent motion in typical astrophysical environments. We utilize two multiphase ISM models, appropriate for the vicinity of the Sun, to calculate the 21-cm spin temperature of neutral hydrogen, including excitation via the Ly-alpha resonant scattering. The first ISM model is a simple clumpy model, while the second is a self-consistent magnetohydrodynamics simulation model using the TIGRESS framework. Ly-alpha photons originating from both H II regions and the collisionally cooling gas are taken into account. We find that the Ly-alpha radiation field is, in general, likely to be strong enough to bring the 21-cm spin temperature of the warm neutral medium close to the kinetic temperature. The escape fraction of Ly-alpha in our ISM models is estimated to be ~7-20%.

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