English

Lyman-$\alpha$ photons through rotating outflows

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2019-01-07 v1

Abstract

Outflows and rotation are two ubiquitous kinematic features in the gas kinematics of galaxies. Here we introduce a semi-analytic model to quantify how rotating outflows impact the morphology of the Lyman-α\alpha emission line. The model is contrasted against Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations of outflowing gas with additional solid body rotation. We explore a range of neutral Hydrogen optical depth of 105τH10710^5 \leq \tau_{\mathrm{H}} \leq10^7, rotational velocity 0vrot/km s11000 \leq v_{\mathrm{rot}}/\mathrm{km\ s}^{-1} \leq 100 and outflow velocity 0vout/km s1500\leq v_{\mathrm{out}}/\mathrm{km\ s}^{-1} \leq 50. We find three consequences of rotation. First, it introduces a dependency with viewing angle; second it broadens the line and third it increases the flux at the line's center. For all viewing angles, the semi-analytic model reproduces the radiative transfer results for the line width and flux change at the line's center within a 7%7\% and 50%50\% precision for an optical depth of τH=105\tau_{\mathrm{H}}=10^5, respectively, and within 2%2\% and 1%1\% for an optical depth of τH=107\tau_{\mathrm{H}}=10^7. Using this model we also show that the peaks of integrated spectra taken from opposite sides of an edge-on rotating gas distribution should have a separation of 12vrot\frac{1}{2}v_{\mathrm{rot}}. The semi-analytic model presented here is a convenient tool to introduce rotational kinematics as a post-processing step of idealized Monte Carlo simulations; it provides a framework to interpret \lya spectra in systems where rotation is expected or directly measured through kinematic maps.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.01266,
  title  = {Lyman-$\alpha$ photons through rotating outflows},
  author = {Maria Camila Remolina-Gutiérrez and Jaime E. Forero-Romero},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.01266},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

9 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-23T05:03:13.240Z