English

Dynamics of hot galactic winds launched from spherically-stratified starburst cores

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-11-18 v2

Abstract

The analytic galactic wind model derived by Chevalier and Clegg in 1985 (CC85) assumes uniform\textit{uniform} energy and mass-injection within the starburst galaxy nucleus. However, the structure of nuclear star clusters, bulges, and star-forming knots are non-uniform. We generalize to cases with spherically-symmetric energy/mass injection that scale as rΔr^{-\Delta} within the starburst volume RR, providing solutions for Δ=0\Delta = 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, and 2. In marked contrast with the CC85 model (Δ=0\Delta=0), which predicts zero velocity at the center, for a singular isothermal sphere profile (Δ=2\Delta=2), we find that the flow maintains a constant\textit{constant} Mach number of M=3/50.77\mathcal{M}=\sqrt{3/5} \simeq 0.77 throughout the volume. The fast interior flow can be written as vr<R=(E˙T/3M˙T)1/20.41vv_{r < R} = (\dot{E}_T/3\dot{M}_T)^{1/2} \simeq 0.41 \, v_\infty, where vv_\infty is the asymptotic velocity, and E˙T\dot{E}_T and M˙T\dot{M}_T are the total energy and mass injection rates. For v2000kms1v_\infty \simeq 2000 \, \mathrm{km \, s^{-1}}, vr<R820kms1v_{r<R} \simeq 820 \, \mathrm{km\, s^{-1}} throughout the wind-driving region. The temperature and density profiles of the non-uniform models may be important for interpreting spatially-resolved maps of starburst nuclei. We compute velocity resolved spectra to contrast the Δ=0\Delta=0 (CC85) and Δ=2\Delta=2 models. Next generation X-ray space telescopes such as XRISM may assess these kinematic predictions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.07193,
  title  = {Dynamics of hot galactic winds launched from spherically-stratified starburst cores},
  author = {Dustin D. Nguyen and Todd A. Thompson and Evan E. Schneider and Sebastian Lopez and Laura A. Lopez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.07193},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

submitted (13 October 2022), accepted MNRAS Letters (08 November 2022)