English

Braving the Storm: Quantifying Disk-wide Ionized Outflows in the Large Magellanic Cloud with ULLYSES

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-08-06 v2

Abstract

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is home to many HII regions, which may lead to significant outflows. We examine the LMC's multiphase gas (T1045T\sim10^{4-5} K) in HI, SII, SiIV, and CIV using 110 stellar sight lines from the HST's Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards (ULLYSES) program. We develop a continuum fitting algorithm based on the concept of Gaussian Process regression and identify reliable LMC interstellar absorption over vhelio=175375v_{\rm helio}=175-375 km s1^{-1}. Our analyses show disk-wide ionized outflows in SiIV and CIV across the LMC with bulk velocities of vout,bulk2060|v_{\rm out, bulk}|\sim20-60 km s1^{-1}, which indicates that most of the outflowing mass is gravitationally bound. The outflows' column densities correlate with the LMC's star formation rate surface densities (ΣSFR\Sigma_{\rm SFR}), and the outflows with higher ΣSFR\Sigma_{\rm SFR} tend to be more ionized. Considering outflows from both sides of the LMC as traced by CIV, we conservatively estimate a total outflow rate of M˙out0.03 Myr1\dot{M}_{\rm out}\gtrsim 0.03~M_\odot {\rm yr}^{-1} and a mass loading factor of η0.15\eta\gtrsim 0.15. We compare the LMC's outflows with those detected in starburst galaxies and simulation predictions, and find a universal scaling relation of vout,bulkΣSFR0.23|v_{\rm out, bulk}|\propto \Sigma_{\rm SFR}^{0.23} over a wide range of star-forming conditions (ΣSFR104.5102 Myr1kpc2\Sigma_{\rm SFR}\sim10^{-4.5}-10^{2}~M_\odot {\rm yr}^{-1} {\rm kpc}^{-2}). Lastly, we find that the outflows are co-rotating with the LMC's young stellar disk and the velocity field does not seem to be significantly impacted by external forces; we thus speculate on the existence of a bow shock leading the LMC, which may have shielded the outflows from ram pressure as the LMC orbits the Milky Way.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2402.04313,
  title  = {Braving the Storm: Quantifying Disk-wide Ionized Outflows in the Large Magellanic Cloud with ULLYSES},
  author = {Yong Zheng and Kirill Tchernyshyov and Knut Olsen and Yumi Choi and Chad Bustard and Julia Roman-Duval and Robert Zhu and Enrico M. Di Teodoro and Jessica Werk and Mary Putman and Anna F. McLeod and Yakov Faerman and Raymond C. Simons and Joshua Peek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.04313},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJ. Key findings can be found in Figures 9-12. Main updates from the previous version include new estimates on star formation rate surface densities. Normalized SII, SiIV, and CIV line spectra derived for this work are published as a High Level Science Product called LMC-FLOWS (doi: 10.17909/hz0m-np43), available on website: https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/lmc-flows

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:40:38.523Z