A systematic investigation of edge-on starburst galaxies: Evidence for supernova-driven superwinds

We are completing a project designed to realistically assess the global/cosmological significance of superwinds by attempting to systematize our understanding of them (determine their incidence rate and the dependence of their properties on the star-formation that drives them). Specifically, we are analyzing data from an optical spectroscopic and narrow-band imaging survey of an infrared flux-limited sample of about 50 starburst galaxies whose stellar disks are viewed nearly edge-on. This edge-on orientation is crucial because the relevant properties of the superwind can be far more easily measured when the flow is seen in isolation against the sky rather than projected onto the much brighter gas associated with the starburst galaxy itself

Are Cosmological Gas Accretion Streams Multiphase and Turbulent?

Simulations of cosmological filamentary accretion reveal flows ("streams") of warm gas, ~$10^4$ K, which are efficient in bringing gas into galaxies. We present a phenomenological scenario where gas in such flows -- if it is shocked as it enters the halo as we assume -- become biphasic and, as a result, turbulent. We consider a collimated stream of warm gas that flows into a halo from an over dense filament of the cosmic web. The post-shock streaming gas expands because it has a higher pressure than the ambient halo gas, and fragments as it cools. The fragmented stream forms a two phase medium: a warm cloudy phase embedded in hot post-shock gas. We argue that the hot phase sustains the accretion shock. A fraction of the initial kinetic energy of the infalling gas is converted into turbulence among and within the warm clouds. The thermodynamic evolution of the post-shock gas is largely determined by the relative timescales of several processes -- the cooling, the expansion of the post-shock gas, the amount of turbulence in the clouds, and the halo dynamics. We expect the gas to become multiphase when the cooling and dynamical times are of the same order-of-magnitude. In this framework, we show that this occurs in the important mass range of ~$10^{11}$ to $10^{13}$ M$_\odot$ , where the bulk of stars have formed in galaxies. Gas accreting along cosmic web filaments may eventually lose coherence and mix with the ambient halo gas. Through both the phase separation and "disruption" of the stream, the accretion efficiency onto a galaxy in a halo dynamical time is lowered. De-collimating flows make the direct interaction between galaxy feedback and accretion streams more likely, thereby further reducing the overall accretion efficiency. Moderating the gas accretion efficiency through these mechanisms may help to alleviate a number of significant challenges in theoretical galaxy formation.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to A&A, New version includes new figure

O VI Emission Imaging of a Galaxy with the Hubble Space Telescope: a Warm Gas Halo Surrounding the Intense Starburst SDSS J115630.63+500822.1

We report results from a new HST study of the OVI 1032,1038\AA\ doublet in emission around intensely star-forming galaxies. The programme aims to characterize the energy balance in starburst galaxies and gas cooling in the difficult-to-map coronal temperature regime of 2-5 x $10^5$K. We present the first resolved image of gas emission in the OVI line. Our target, SDSS J1156+5008, is very compact in the continuum but displays OVI emission to radii of 23 kpc. The surface brightness profile is well fit by an exponential with a scale of 7.5kpc. This is ten times the size of the photoionized gas, and we estimate that 1/6 the total OVI luminosity comes from resonantly scattered continuum radiation. Spectroscopy - which closely resembles a stacked sample of archival spectra - confirms the OVI emission, and determines the column density and outflow velocity from blueshifted absorption. The combination of measurements enables several new calculations with few assumptions. The OVI regions fill only ~$10^{-3}$ of the volume. By comparing the cooling time with the cloud sound-crossing time, the cooling distance with the size, and the pressure in the OVI and nebular gas, we conclude that the OVI-bearing gas cannot have been lifted to the scale height at this temperature, and must be cooling in situ through this coronal temperature regime. The coronal phase contains ~1% of the ionized mass, and its kinetic energy is currently ~1% of the budget set by supernova feedback. However a much larger amount of the gas must have cooled through this phase during the star formation episode. The outflow exceeds the escape velocity and the gas may become unbound, but it will recombine before it escapes and become visible to Lyman (and OI) spectroscopy. The mapping of this gas represents a crucial step in further constraining galaxy formation scenarios and guiding the development of future satellites.Comment: Accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. 25 pages, 11 figures. Section 7 presents calculated properties of warm halo gas. Version 2 fixes PDF compatibility issue for some PDF viewer

The Milky Way as a High Redshift Galaxy: The Importance of Thick Disk Formation in Galaxies

We compare the star-formation history and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW) with the properties of distant disk galaxies. During the first ~4 Gyr of its evolution, the MW formed stars with a high star-formation intensity (SFI), Sigma_SFR~0.6 Msun/yr/kpc2 and as a result, generated outflows and high turbulence in its interstellar medium. This intense phase of star formation corresponds to the formation of the thick disk. The formation of the thick disk is a crucial phase which enables the MW to have formed approximately half of its total stellar mass by z~1 which is similar to "MW progenitor galaxies" selected by abundance matching. This agreement suggests that the formation of the thick disk may be a generic evolutionary phase in disk galaxies. Using a simple energy injection-kinetic energy relationship between the 1-D velocity dispersion and SFI, we can reproduce the average perpendicular dispersion in stellar velocities of the MW with age. This relationship, its inferred evolution, and required efficiency are consistent with observations of galaxies from z~0-3. The high turbulence generated by intense star formation naturally resulted in a thick disk, a chemically well-mixed ISM, and is the mechanism that links the evolution of MW to the observed characteristics of distant disk galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; accepted to ApJ Letter

The slowing down of galaxy disks in dissipationless minor mergers

We have investigated the impact of dissipationless minor galaxy mergers on the angular momentum of the remnant. Our simulations cover a range of initial orbital characteristics and the system consists of a massive galaxy with a bulge and disk merging with a much less massive (one-tenth or one-twentieth) gasless companion which has a variety of morphologies (disk- or elliptical-like) and central baryonic mass concentrations. During the process of merging, the orbital angular momentum is redistributed into the internal angular momentum of the final system; the internal angular momentum of the primary galaxy can increase or decrease depending on the relative orientation of the orbital spin vectors (direct or retrograde), while the initially non-rotating dark matter halo always gains angular momentum. The specific angular momentum of the stellar component always decreases independent of the orbital parameters or morphology of the satellite, the decrease in the rotation velocity of the primary galaxy is accompanied by a change in the anisotropy of the orbits, and the ratio of rotation speed to velocity dispersion of the merger remnant is lower than the initial value, not only due to an increase in the dispersion but also to the slowing -down of the disk rotation. We briefly discuss several astrophysical implications of these results, suggesting that minor mergers do not cause a "random walk" process of the angular momentum of the stellar disk component of galaxies, but rather a steady decrease. Minor mergers may play a role in producing the large scatter observed in the Tully-Fisher relation for S0 galaxies, as well as in the increase of the velocity dispersion and the decrease in $v/\sigma$ at large radii as observed in S0 galaxies.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&

The Panchromatic Starburst Intensity Limit At Low And High Redshift

The integrated bolometric effective surface brightness S_e distributions of starbursts are investigated for samples observed in 1. the rest frame ultraviolet (UV), 2. the far-infrared and H-alpha, and 3. 21cm radio continuum emission. For the UV sample we exploit a tight empirical relationship between UV reddening and extinction to recover the bolometric flux. Parameterizing the S_e upper limit by the 90th percentile of the distribution, we find a mean S_{e,90} = 2.0e11 L_{sun}/kpc^2 for the three samples, with a factor of three difference between the samples. This is consistent with what is expected from the calibration uncertainties alone. We find little variation in S_{e,90} with effective radii for R_e ~ 0.1 - 10 kpc, and little evolution out to redshifts z ~ 3. The lack of a strong dependence of S_{e,90} on wavelength, and its consistency with the pressure measured in strong galactic winds, argue that it corresponds to a global star formation intensity limit (\dot\Sigma_{e,90} ~ 45 M_{sun}/kpc^2/yr) rather than being an opacity effect. There are several important implications of these results: 1. There is a robust physical mechanism limiting starburst intensity. We note that starbursts have S_e consistent with the expectations of gravitational instability models applied to the solid body rotation portion of galaxies. 2. Elliptical galaxies and spiral bulges can plausibly be built with maximum intensity bursts, while normal spiral disks can not. 3. The UV extinction of high-z galaxies is significant, implying that star formation in the early universe is moderately obscured. After correcting for extinction, the observed metal production rate at z ~ 3 agrees well with independent estimates made for the epoch of elliptical galaxy formation.Comment: 31 pages Latex (aas2pp4.sty,psfig.sty), 9 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

On the Structure and Morphology of the `Diffuse Ionized Medium' in Star-Forming Galaxies

Deep H$\alpha$ images of a sample of nearby late-type spiral galaxies have been analyzed to characterize the morphology and energetic significance of the ``Diffuse Ionized Medium'' (DIM). We find that the DIM properties can be reasonably unified as a function of relative surface brightness, by using a new method to quantify the DIM importance in galaxies. This new approach is more consistent with the fundamentally morphological definition of the DIM as being `Diffuse', compared to the traditional way adopted in previous studies that could only isolate the DIM based on an absolute surface brightness criterion. Our results suggest that the variation of the DIM's significance among the galaxies is small enough so that the fractional contribution of the DIM to the global H$\alpha$ luminosity in the galaxies is fairly constant, as has been observed. We found a smooth structural transition from HII regions to the DIM, suggesting that the ionizing energy for the DIM mainly comes from HII regions.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, AASTeX styl

Lyman-break galaxies at z~5 -I. First significant stellar mass assembly in galaxies that are not simply z~3 LBGs at higher redshift

We determine the ensemble properties of z~5 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) selected as V-band dropouts to i(AB)<26.3 in the Chandra Deep Field South using their rest-frame UV-to-visible SEDs. By matching the selection and performing the same analysis that has been used for z~3 samples, we show clear differences in the properties of two samples of LBGs which are separated by ~1Gyr in lookback time. We find that z~5 LBGs are typically much younger (<100Myr) and have lower stellar masses (10^9Msol) than their z~3 counterparts. The difference in mass is significant even when considering the presence of an older, underlying population in both samples. Such young and moderately massive systems dominate the luminous z~5 LBG population (>70%), whereas they comprise <30% of LBG samples at z~3. This result is robust under all reasonable modelling assumptions. These intense starbursts appear to be experiencing their first (few) generations of large-scale star formation and are accumulating their first significant stellar mass. Their dominance in luminous LBG samples suggests that z~5 witnesses a period of wide-spread, recent galaxy formation. As such, z~5 LBGs are the likely progenitors of the spheroidal components of present-day massive galaxies. This is supported by their high stellar mass surface densities, their core phase-space densities, as well as the ages of stars in the bulge of our Galaxy and other massive systems. Their high star formation rates per unit area suggest that these systems host outflows or winds that enrich the intra- and inter-galactic media with metals. Their estimated young ages are consistent with inefficient metal-mixing on galaxy-wide scales. Therefore these galaxies may contain a significant fraction of metal-free stars as has been proposed for z~3 LBGs (Jimenez & Haiman 2006). [Abridged]Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 21 pages, 9 postscript figures. For a PDF file with high resolution figures, see http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~averma