English

Dissecting a 30 kpc galactic outflow at $z \sim$ 1.7

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-10-04 v2

Abstract

We present the spatially resolved measurements of a cool galactic outflow in the gravitationally lensed galaxy RCS0327 at z1.703z \approx 1.703 using VLT/MUSE IFU observations. We probe the cool outflowing gas, traced by blueshifted Mg II and Fe II absorption lines, in 15 distinct regions of the same galaxy in its image-plane. Different physical regions, 5 to 7 kpc apart within the galaxy, drive the outflows at different velocities (VoutV_{out} \sim 161-161 to 240-240 km s1^{-1}), and mass outflow rates (M˙out\dot{M}_{out} \sim 183 to 527 M yr1M_{\odot}\ yr^{-1}). The outflow velocities from different regions of the same galaxy vary by 80 km s1^{-1}, which is comparable to the variation seen in a large sample of star-burst galaxies in the local Universe. Using multiply lensed images of RCS0327, we probe the same star-forming region at different spatial scales (0.5 kpc2^2-25 kpc2^2), we find that outflow velocities vary between \sim 120-120 to 242-242 km s1^{-1}, and the mass outflow rates vary between \sim 37 to 254 M yr1M_{\odot}\ yr^{-1}. The outflow momentum flux in this galaxy is \geq 100% of the momentum flux provided by star-formation in individual regions, and outflow energy flux is \approx 10% of the total energy flux provided by star-formation. These estimates suggest that the outflow in RCS0327 is energy driven. This work shows the importance of small scale variations of outflow properties due to the variations of local stellar properties of the host galaxy in the context of galaxy evolution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.07328,
  title  = {Dissecting a 30 kpc galactic outflow at $z \sim$ 1.7},
  author = {Ahmed Shaban and Rongmon Bordoloi and John Chisholm and Jane R. Rigby and Soniya Sharma and Keren Sharon and Nicolas Tejos and Matthew B. Bayliss and L. Felipe Barrientos and Sebastian Lopez and Cédric Ledoux and Michael G. Gladders and Michael K. Florian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.07328},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

26 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS, the referee comments are incorporated in this version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:03:16.878Z