arXiv subjects

S. Peng Oh

Publications and source records attributed to S. Peng Oh.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Understanding the circumgalactic medium is critical for understanding galaxy evolution

Galaxies evolve under the influence of gas flows between their interstellar medium and their surrounding gaseous halos known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM). The CGM is a major reservoir of galactic baryons and metals, and plays a key role in the long cycles of accretion, feedback, and recycling of gas that drive star formation. In order to fully understand the physical processes at work within galaxies, it is therefore essential to have a firm understanding of the composition, structure, kinematics, thermodynamics, and evolution of the CGM. In this white paper we outline connections between the CGM and galactic star formation histories, internal kinematics, chemical evolution, quenching, satellite evolution, dark matter halo occupation, and the reionization of the larger-scale intergalactic medium in light of the advances that will be made on these topics in the 2020s. We argue that, in the next decade, fundamental progress on all of these major issues depends critically on improved empirical characterization and theoretical understanding of the CGM. In particular, we discuss how future advances in spatially-resolved CGM observations at high spectral resolution, broader characterization of the CGM across galaxy mass and redshift, and expected breakthroughs in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations will help resolve these major problems in galaxy evolution.

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arXiv2018

The growth and entrainment of cold gas in a hot wind

Both absorption and emission line studies show that cold gas around galaxies is commonly outflowing at speeds of several hundred km$\,\textrm{s}^{-1}$. This observational fact poses a severe challenge to our theoretical models of galaxy evolution since most feedback mechanisms (e.g., supernovae feedback) accelerate hot gas, and the timescale it takes to accelerate a blob of cold gas via a hot wind is much larger than the time it takes to destroy the blob. We revisit this long-standing problem using three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations with radiative cooling. Our results confirm previous findings, that cooling is often not efficient enough to prevent the destruction of cold gas. However, we also identify regions of parameter space where the cooling efficiency of the mixed, `warm' gas is sufficiently large to contribute new comoving cold gas which can significantly exceed the original cold gas mass. This happens whenever, $t_{\mathrm{cool, mix}}/t_{\mathrm{cc}} < 1$, where $t_{\mathrm{cool,mix}}$ is the cooling time of the mixed warm gas and $t_{\mathrm{cc}}$ is the cloud-crushing time. This criterion is always satisfied for a large enough cloud. Cooling `focuses' stripped material onto the tail where mixing takes place and new cold gas forms. A sufficiently large simulation domain is crucial to capturing this behavior.

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arXiv2018

The impact of magnetic fields on thermal instability

Cold ($T\sim 10^{4} \ \mathrm{K}$) gas is very commonly found in both galactic and cluster halos. There is no clear consensus on its origin. Such gas could be uplifted from the central galaxy by galactic or AGN winds. Alternatively, it could form in situ by thermal instability. Fragmentation into a multi-phase medium has previously been shown in hydrodynamic simulations to take place once $t_\mathrm{cool}/t_\mathrm{ff}$, the ratio of the cooling time to the free-fall time, falls below a threshold value. Here, we use 3D plane-parallel MHD simulations to investigate the influence of magnetic fields. We find that because magnetic tension suppresses buoyant oscillations of condensing gas, it destabilizes all scales below $l_\mathrm{A}^\mathrm{cool} \sim v_\mathrm{A} t_\mathrm{cool}$, enhancing thermal instability. This effect is surprisingly independent of magnetic field orientation or cooling curve shape, and sets in even at very low magnetic field strengths. Magnetic fields critically modify both the amplitude and morphology of thermal instability, with $δρ/ρ\propto β^{-1/2}$, where $β$ is the ratio of thermal to magnetic pressure. In galactic halos, magnetic fields can render gas throughout the entire halo thermally unstable, and may be an attractive explanation for the ubiquity of cold gas, even in the halos of passive, quenched galaxies.

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arXiv2017

High $β$ Effects on Cosmic Ray Streaming in Galaxy Clusters

Diffuse, extended radio emission in galaxy clusters, commonly referred to as radio halos, indicate the presence of high energy cosmic ray (CR) electrons and cluster-wide magnetic fields. We can predict from theory the expected surface brightness of a radio halo, given magnetic field and CR density profiles. Previous studies have shown that the nature of CR transport can radically effect the expected radio halo emission from clusters (Wiener et al. 2013). Reasonable levels of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave damping can lead to significant CR streaming speeds. But a careful treatment of MHD waves in a high $β$ plasma, as expected in cluster environments, reveals damping rates may be enhanced by a factor of $β^{1/2}$. This leads to faster CR streaming and lower surface brightnesses than without this effect. In this work we re-examine the simplified, 1D Coma cluster simulations (with radial magnetic fields) of Wiener et al. (2013) and discuss observable consequences of this high $β$ damping. Future work is required to study this effect in more realistic simulations.

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arXiv2017

On the Apparent Power Law in CDM Halo Pseudo Phase Space Density Profiles

We investigate the apparent power-law scaling of the pseudo phase space density (PPSD) in CDM halos. We study fluid collapse, using the close analogy between the gas entropy and the PPSD in the fluid approximation. Our hydrodynamic calculations allow for a precise evaluation of logarithmic derivatives. For scale-free initial conditions, entropy is a power law in Lagrangian (mass) coordinates, but not in Eulerian (radial) coordinates. The deviation from a radial power law arises from incomplete hydrostatic equilibrium (HSE), linked to bulk inflow and mass accretion, and the convergence to the asymptotic central power-law slope is very slow. For more realistic collapse, entropy is not a power law with either radius or mass due to deviations from HSE and scale-dependent initial conditions. Instead, it is a slowly rolling power law that appears approximately linear on a log-log plot. Our fluid calculations recover PPSD power-law slopes and residual amplitudes similar to N-body simulations, indicating that deviations from a power law are not numerical artefacts. In addition, we find that realistic collapse is not self-similar: scale lengths such as the shock radius and the turnaround radius are not power-law functions of time. We therefore argue that the apparent power-law PPSD cannot be used to make detailed dynamical inferences or extrapolate halo profiles inward, and that it does not indicate any hidden integrals of motion. We also suggest that the apparent agreement between the PPSD and the asymptotic Bertschinger slope is purely coincidental.

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arXiv2017

Resonant line transfer in a fog: Using Lyman-alpha to probe tiny structures in atomic gas

Motivated by observational and theoretical work which both suggest very small scale ($\lesssim 1\,$pc) structure in the circum-galactic medium of galaxies and in other environments, we study Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) radiative transfer in an extremely clumpy medium with many "clouds" of neutral gas along the line of sight. While previous studies have typically considered radiative transfer through sightlines intercepting $\lesssim 10$ clumps, we explore the limit of a very large number of clumps per sightline (up to $f_{\mathrm{c}} \sim 1000$). Our main finding is that, for covering factors greater than some critical threshold, a multiphase medium behaves similar to a homogeneous medium in terms of the emergent Ly$α$ spectrum. The value of this threshold depends on both the clump column density and on the movement of the clumps. We estimate this threshold analytically and compare our findings to radiative transfer simulations with a range of covering factors, clump column densities, radii, and motions. Our results suggest that (i) the success in fitting observed Ly$α$ spectra using homogeneous "shell models" (and the corresponding failure of multiphase models) hints towards the presence of very small-scale structure in neutral gas, in agreement within a number of other observations; and (ii) the recurrent problems of reproducing realistic line profiles from hydrodynamical simulations may be due to their inability to resolve small-scale structure, which causes simulations to underestimate the effective covering factor of neutral gas clouds.

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arXiv2017

Interaction of Cosmic Rays with Cold Clouds in Galactic Halos

We investigate the effects of cosmic ray (CR) dynamics on cold, dense clouds embedded in a hot, tenuous galactic halo. If the magnetic field does not increase too much inside the cloud, the local reduction in Alfvén speed imposes a bottleneck on CRs streaming out from the star-forming galactic disk. The bottleneck flattens the upstream CR gradient in the hot gas, implying that multi-phase structure could have global effects on CR driven winds. A large CR pressure gradient can also develop on the outward-facing edge of the cloud. This pressure gradient has two independent effects. The CRs push the cloud upward, imparting it with momentum. On smaller scales, the CRs pressurize cold gas in the fronts, reducing its density, consistent with the low densities of cold gas inferred in recent COS observations of local $L_{*}$ galaxies. They also heat the material at the cloud edge, broadening the cloud-halo interface and causing an observable change in interface ionic abundances. Due to the much weaker temperature dependence of cosmic ray heating relative to thermal conductive heating, CR mediated fronts have a higher ratio of low to high ions compared to conduction fronts, in better agreement with observations. We investigate these effects separately using 1D simulations and analytic techniques.

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arXiv2017

Cosmic ray-driven galactic winds: streaming or diffusion?

Cosmic rays (CRs) have recently re-emerged as attractive candidates for mediating feedback in galaxies because of their long cooling timescales. They can have energy densities comparable to the thermal gas, but do not suffer catastrophic cooling losses. Recent simulations have shown that the momentum and energy deposited by CRs moving with respect to the ambient medium can drive galactic winds. However, simulations are hampered by our ignorance of the details of CR transport. Two key limits previously considered model CR transport as a purely diffusive process (with a constant diffusion coefficient) and as an advective streaming process. With a series of GADGET simulations, we compare and contrast the results of these different assumptions. In idealised three-dimensional galaxy formation models, we show that these two cases result in significant differences for the galactic wind mass loss rates and star formation suppression in dwarf galaxies with halo masses $M\approx10^{10}\,\textrm{M}_\odot$: diffusive CR transport results in more than ten times larger mass loss rates compared to CR streaming models. We demonstrate that this is largely due to the excitation of Alfvén waves during the CR streaming process that drains energy from the CR population to the thermal gas, which is subsequently radiated away. By contrast, CR diffusion conserves the CR energy in the absence of adiabatic changes and if CRs are efficiently scattered by Alfvén waves that are propagating up the CR gradient. Moreover, because pressure gradients are preserved by CR streaming, but not diffusion, the two can have a significantly different dynamical evolution regardless of this energy exchange. In particular, the constant diffusion coefficients usually assumed can lead to unphysically high CR fluxes.

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arXiv2016

Turbulence and Particle Acceleration in Giant Radio Haloes: the Origin of Seed Electrons

About 1/3 of X-ray-luminous clusters show smooth, Mpc-scale radio emission, known as giant radio haloes. One promising model for radio haloes is Fermi-II acceleration of seed relativistic electrons by compressible turbulence. The origin of these seed electrons has never been fully explored. Here, we integrate the Fokker-Planck equation of the cosmic ray (CR) electron and proton distributions when post-processing cosmological simulations of cluster formation, and confront them with radio surface brightness and spectral data of Coma. For standard assumptions, structure formation shocks lead to a seed electron population which produces too centrally concentrated radio emission. Matching observations requires modifying properties of the CR population (rapid streaming; enhanced CR electron acceleration at shocks) or turbulence (increasing turbulent-to-thermal energy density with radius), but at the expense of fine-tuning. In a parameter study, we find that radio properties are exponentially sensitive to the amplitude of turbulence, which is inconsistent with small scatter in scaling relations. This sensitivity is removed if we relate the acceleration time to the turbulent dissipation time. In this case, turbulence above a threshold value provides a fixed amount of amplification; observations could thus potentially constrain the unknown CR seed population. To obtain sufficient acceleration, the turbulent magneto-hydrodynamics cascade has to terminate by transit time damping on CRs, i.e., thermal particles must be scattered by plasma instabilities. Understanding the small scatter in radio halo scaling relations may provide a rich source of insight on plasma processes in clusters.

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arXiv2016

From Mirrors to Windows: Lyman-Alpha Radiative Transfer in a Very Clumpy Medium

Lyman-Alpha (Ly$α$) is the strongest emission line in the Universe and is frequently used to detect and study the most distant galaxies. Because Lya is a resonant line, photons typically scatter prior to escaping; this scattering process complicates the interpretation of Ly$α$ spectra, but also encodes a wealth of information about the structure and kinematics of neutral gas in the galaxy. Modeling the Ly$α$ line therefore allows us to study tiny-scale features of the gas, even in the most distant galaxies. Curiously, observed Ly$α$ spectra can be modeled successfully with very simple, homogeneous geometries (such as an expanding, spherical shell), whereas more realistic, multiphase geometries often fail to reproduce the observed spectra. This seems paradoxical since the gas in galaxies is known to be multiphase. In this Letter, we show that spectra emerging from extremely clumpy geometries with many clouds along the line of sight converge to the predictions from simplified, homogeneous models. We suggest that this resolves the apparent discrepancy, and may provide a way to study the gas structure in galaxies on scales far smaller than can be probed in either cosmological simulations or direct (i.e., spatially-resolved) observations.

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arXiv2016

The Efficiency of Magnetic Field Amplification at Shocks by Turbulence

Turbulent dynamo field amplification has often been invoked to explain the strong field strengths in thin rims in supernova shocks ($\sim 100 \, μ$G) and in radio relics in galaxy clusters ($\sim μ$G). We present high resolution MHD simulations of the interaction between pre-shock turbulence, clumping and shocks, to quantify the conditions under which turbulent dynamo amplification can be significant. We demonstrate numerically converged field amplification which scales with Alfvén Mach number, $B/B_0 \propto {\mathcal M}_{\rm A}$, up to ${\mathcal M}_{\rm A} \sim 150$. This implies that the post-shock field strength is relatively independent of the seed field. Amplification is dominated by compression at low ${\mathcal M}_{\rm A}$, and stretching (turbulent amplification) at high ${\mathcal M}_{\rm A}$. For high $\mathcal{M}_{\rm A}$, the $B$-field grows exponentially and saturates at equipartition with turbulence, while the vorticity jumps sharply at the shock and subsequently decays; the resulting field is orientated predominately along the shock normal (an effect only apparent in 3D and not 2D). This agrees with the radial field bias seen in supernova remnants. By contrast, for low $\mathcal{M}_{\rm A}$, field amplification is mostly compressional, relatively modest, and results in a predominantly perpendicular field. The latter is consistent with the polarization seen in radio relics. Our results are relatively robust to the assumed level of gas clumping. Our results imply that the turbulent dynamo may be important for supernovae, but is only consistent with the field strength, and not geometry, for cluster radio relics. For the latter, this implies strong pre-existing $B$-fields in the ambient cluster outskirts.

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arXiv2016

The Distribution of Bubble Sizes During Reionization

A key physical quantity during reionization is the size of HII regions. Previous studies found a characteristic bubble size which increases rapidly during reionization, with apparent agreement between simulations and analytic excursion set theory. Using four different methods, we critically examine this claim. In particular, we introduce the use of the watershed algorithm -- widely used for void finding in galaxy surveys -- which we show to be an unbiased method with the lowest dispersion and best performance on Monte-Carlo realizations of a known bubble size PDF. We find that a friends-of-friends algorithm declares most of the ionized volume to be occupied by a network of volume-filling regions connected by narrow tunnels. For methods tuned to detect the volume-filling regions, previous apparent agreement between simulations and theory is spurious, and due to a failure to correctly account for the window function of measurement schemes. The discrepancy is already obvious from visual inspection. Instead, HII regions in simulations are significantly larger (by factors of 10-1000 in volume) than analytic predictions. The size PDF is narrower, and evolves more slowly with time, than predicted. It becomes more sharply peaked as reionization progresses. These effects are likely caused by bubble mergers, which are inadequately modeled by analytic theory. Our results have important consequences for high-redshift 21cm observations, the mean free path of ionizing photons, and the visibility of Ly-alpha emitters, and point to a fundamental failure in our understanding of the characteristic scales of the reionization process.

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arXiv2016

A Characteristic Scale for Cold Gas

We find that clouds of optically-thin, pressure-confined gas are prone to fragmentation as they cool below $\sim10^6$ K. This fragmentation follows the lengthscale $\sim{c}_{\text{s}}\,t_{\text{cool}}$, ultimately reaching very small scales ($\sim{0.1} \text{pc}/n$) as they reach the temperature $\sim10^4$ K at which hydrogen recombines. While this lengthscale depends on the ambient pressure confining the clouds, we find that the column density through an individual fragment $N_{\text{cloudlet}}\sim10^{17} \text{cm}^{-3}$ is essentially independent of environment; this column density represents a characteristic scale for atomic gas at $10^4$ K. We therefore suggest that "clouds" of cold, atomic gas may in fact have the structure of a mist or a fog, composed of tiny fragments dispersed throughout the ambient medium. We show that this scale emerges in hydrodynamic simulations, and that the corresponding increase in the surface area may imply rapid entrainment of cold gas. We also apply it to a number of observational puzzles, including the large covering fraction of diffuse gas in galaxy halos, the broad line widths seen in quasar and AGN spectra, and the entrainment of cold gas in galactic winds. While our simulations make a number of assumptions and thus have associated uncertainties, we show that this characteristic scale is consistent with a number of observations, across a wide range of astrophysical environments. We discuss future steps for testing, improving, and extending our model.

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arXiv2016

Reionization Through the Lens of Percolation Theory

The reionization of intergalactic hydrogen has received intense theoretical scrutiny over the past two decades. Here, we approach the process formally as a percolation process and phase transition. Using semi-numeric simulations, we demonstrate that an infinitely-large ionized region abruptly appears at an ionized fraction of ~0.1 and quickly grows to encompass most of the ionized gas: by an ionized fraction of 0.3, nearly ninety percent of the ionized material is part of this region. Throughout most of reionization, nearly all of the intergalactic medium is divided into just two regions, one ionized and one neutral, and both infinite in extent. We also show that the discrete ionized regions that exist before and near this transition point follow a near-power law distribution in volume, with equal contributions to the total filling factor per logarithmic interval in size up to a sharp cutoff in volume. These qualities are generic to percolation processes, with the detailed behavior a result of long-range correlations in the underlying density field. These insights will be crucial to understanding the distribution of ionized and neutral gas during reionization and provide precise meaning to the intuitive description of reionization as an "overlap" process.

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arXiv2015

The Flatness and Sudden Evolution of the Intergalactic Ionizing Background

The ionizing background of cosmic hydrogen is an important probe of the sources and absorbers of ionizing radiation in the post-reionization universe. Previous studies show that the ionization rate should be very sensitive to changes in the source population: as the emissivity rises, absorbers shrink in size, increasing the ionizing mean free path and, hence, the ionizing background. By contrast, observations of the ionizing background find a very flat evolution from z~2-5, before falling precipitously at z~6. We resolve this puzzling discrepancy by pointing out that, at z~2-5, optically thick absorbers are associated with the same collapsed halos that host ionizing sources. Thus, an increasing abundance of galaxies is compensated for by a corresponding increase in the absorber population, which moderates the instability in the ionizing background. However, by z~5-6, gas outside of halos dominates the absorption, the coupling between sources and absorbers is lost, and the ionizing background evolves rapidly. Our halo based model reproduces observations of the ionizing background, its flatness and sudden decline, as well as the redshift evolution of the ionizing mean free path. Our work suggests that, through much of their history, both star formation and photoelectric opacity in the universe track halo growth.

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arXiv2015

The [CII] Deficit in LIRGs and ULIRGs is Due to High-Temperature Saturation

Current predictions for the line ratios from photo-dissociative regions (PDRs) in galaxies adopt theoretical models that consider only individual parcels of PDR gas each characterized by the local density and far-UV radiation field. However, these quantities are not measured directly from unresolved galaxies, making the connection between theory and observation ambiguous. We develop a model that uses galaxy-averaged, observable inputs to explain and predict measurements of the [CII] fine structure line in luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. We find that the [CII] deficit observed in the highest IR surface-brightness systems is a natural consequence of saturating the upper fine-structure transition state at gas temperatures above 91 K. To reproduce the measured amplitude of the [CII]/FIR ratio in deficit galaxies, we require that [CII] trace approximately 10-17% of all gas in these systems, roughly independent of IR surface brightness and consistent with observed [CII] to CO(1--0) line ratios. Calculating the value of this fraction is a challenge for theoretical models. The difficulty may reside in properly treating the topology of molecular and dissociated gas, different descriptions for which may be observationally distinguished by the [OI]63 micron line in yet-to-be-probed regions of parameter space, allowing PDR emission lines from to probe not only the effects of star formation but also the state and configuration of interstellar gas.

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arXiv2015

Turbulence and Particle Acceleration in Giant Radio Halos: the Origin of Seed Electrons

About 1/3 of X-ray-luminous clusters show smooth, unpolarized radio emission on ~Mpc scales, known as giant radio halos. One promising model for radio halos is Fermi-II acceleration of seed relativistic electrons by turbulence of the intracluster medium (ICM); Coulomb losses prohibit acceleration from the thermal pool. However, the origin of seed electrons has never been fully explored. Here, we integrate the Fokker-Planck equation of the cosmic ray (CR) electron and proton distributions in a cosmological simulations of cluster formation. For standard assumptions, structure formation shocks lead to a seed electron population which produces too centrally concentrated radio emission. Instead, we present three realistic scenarios that each can reproduce the spatially flat radio emission observed in the Coma cluster: (1) the ratio of injected turbulent energy density to thermal energy density increase significantly with radius, as seen in cosmological simulations. This generates a flat radio profile even if the seed population of CRs is steep with radius. (2) Self-confinement of energetic CR protons can be inefficient, and CR protons may stream at the Alfven speed to the cluster outskirts when the ICM is relatively quiescent. A spatially flat CR proton distribution develops and produces the required population of secondary seed electrons. (3) The CR proton to electron acceleration efficiency K_ep ~ 0.1 is assumed to be larger than in our Galaxy (K_ep ~ 0.01), due to the magnetic geometry at the shock. The resulting primary electron population dominates. Due to their weaker density dependence compared to secondary electrons, these primaries can also reproduce radio observations. These competing non-trivial solutions provide incisive probes of non thermal processes in the high-beta ICM.

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arXiv2014

Constraining Very High Mass Population III Stars through He II Emission in Galaxy BDF-521 at z = 7.01

Numerous theoretical models have long proposed that a strong He II 1640 emission line is the most prominent and unique feature of massive Population III (Pop III) stars in high redshift galaxies. The He II 1640 line strength can constrain the mass and IMF of Pop III stars. We use F132N narrowband filter on the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to look for strong He II lambda 1640 emission in the galaxy BDF-521 at z=7.01, one of the most distant spectroscopically-confirmed galaxies to date. Using deep F132N narrowband imaging, together with our broadband imaging with F125W and F160W filters, we do not detect He II emission from this galaxy, but place a 2-sigma upper limit on the flux of 5.3x10^-19 ergs s^-1 cm^-2. This measurement corresponds to a 2-sigma upper limit on the Pop III star formation rate (SFR_PopIII) of ~ 0.2 M_solar yr^-1, assuming a Salpeter IMF with 50< M/M_solar < 1000. From the high signal-to-noise broadband measurements in F125W and F160W, we fit the UV continuum for BDF-521. The spectral flux density is ~ 3.6x 10^-11 lambda^-2.32 ergs s^-1 cm^-2 A^-1, which corresponds to an overall unobscured SFR of ~ 5 M_solar yr^-1. Our upper limit on SFR_PopIII suggests that massive Pop III stars represent < 4% of the total star formation. Further, the HST high resolution imaging suggests that BDF-521 is an extremely compact galaxy, with a half-light radius of 0.6 kpc.

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