| 1. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy
(författare)
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Exploring the nature of ISM turbulencein disc galaxies
- 2024
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Galaxy formation is a continuous process that started only a few hundred million yearsafter the Big Bang. The first galaxies were very volatile, with bursts of star formationand disorganised gas motions. However, even as these galaxies evolved to have orderlyrotating gas discs, the gas within the disc, referred to as the interstellar medium (ISM),still remained highly turbulent. In fact, the ISM is supersonically turbulent, meaning thatthe disorganised gas motion exceeds the speed of sound in the medium. This supersonicturbulence has been connected to several crucial properties related to galaxy evolution; forexample, increasing (and decreasing in some regions) the ISM gas density, star formation,and gas mixing.Many observation have shown that all of the gas phases in the ISM experience su-personic levels of turbulence, with line widths (an observational method to quantify theamount of turbulence) as high as σg ≲ 100 km s−1 in high-redshift (younger) disc galaxies,while local quiescent discs have σg ≲ 40 km s−1 . However, the ISM contains a variety ofgas phases that cover a wide range of temperatures and densities, which exhibit differentlevels of turbulence. For example, the warm ionised gas phase represents the upper limitsquoted above, while colder denser gas only reaches σg ≲ 40 km s−1 and σg ≲ 15 km s−1 inhigh-redshift and local galaxies, respectively.The physical processes driving this turbulence are not fully understood, but a combi-nation of stellar feedback (e.g. supernova) and gravitational instability (e.g. during cloudcollapse) have been suggested to provide a majority of the turbulent energy. In particular,stellar feedback is crucial in the formation of warm ionised gas and may therefore have asignificant contribution on the turbulence within ionised gas. Furthermore, heterogeneousdata of widely different galaxies (in terms of e.g. mass and size) at different resolutions(which causes artificial line broadening) complicates understanding the underlying cause.A commonly used tracer of ionised gas is the Hα emission line and has been usedextensively in high-redshift surveys. However, the contribution of the Hα signal comesfrom two primary sources: the radiatively ionised regions around massive newborn starsembedded in molecular gas (called H II regions) and diffuse ionised gas (DIG) filling theentire galactic disc. Observations have found that these two sources contribute, on average,roughly the same amount to the Hα signal (although with a large spread), but the levelsof turbulence is starkly different; with the DIG being roughly 2-3 times more turbulethan the gas in H II regions.Numerical simulations have come a long way and are now able to simulate entire discgalaxies at parsec-scale resolution (in regions of interest). Furthermore, galaxy simulationshave been able to reproduce the level of turbulence observed in local and high-redshiftgalaxies. Direct comparisons between numerical and observational studies are crucial tounderstand the relevant physics driving observed correlations. However, numerical andobservational work have different data available and the reduction/analysis varies betweenauthors, and so diligence is required to perform qualitative comparisons.In this work, I perform numerical simulations to investigate ISM turbulence in differentgas phases. My simulations model a Milky Way-like galaxy at two different redshifts(using gas fraction as a proxy for redshift) and with/without stellar feedback physics, toevaluate its impact. I perform mock observations to explore the relation between the starformation rate and turbulence, and investigate what is driving this relation. Additionally, Ianalyse the Hα emission line and compare the contribution in intensity and line broadening(turbulence) from H II regions and DIG.
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| 2. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy, et al.
(författare)
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From giant clumps to clouds - III. The connection between star formation and turbulence in the ISM
- 2022
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 514:1, s. 480-496
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Supersonic gas turbulence is a ubiquitous property of the interstellar medium. The level of turbulence, quantified by the gas velocity dispersion (sigma(g)), is observed to increase with the star formation rate (SFR) of a galaxy, but it is yet not established whether this trend is driven by stellar feedback or gravitational instabilities. In this work, we carry out hydrodynamical simulations of entire disc galaxies, with different gas fractions, to understand the origins of the SFR-sigma(g) relation. We show that disc galaxies reach the same levels of turbulence regardless of the presence of stellar feedback processes, and argue that this is an outcome of the way disc galaxies regulate their gravitational stability. The simulations match the SFR-sigma(g) relation up to SFRs of the order of tens of M-circle dot yr(-1) and sigma(g) similar to 50 km s(-1) in neutral hydrogen and molecular gas, but fail to reach the very large values (> 100 km s(-1)) reported in the literature for rapidly star-forming galaxies. We demonstrate that such high values of sigma(g) can be explained by ( 1) insufficient beam smearing corrections in observations and (2) stellar feedback being coupled to the ionized gas phase traced by recombination lines. Given that the observed SFR-sigma(g) relation is composed of highly heterogeneous data, with sigma(g) at high SFRs almost exclusively being derived from H alpha observations of high-redshift galaxies with complex morphologies, we caution against analytical models that attempt to explain the SFR-sigma(g) relation without accounting for these effects.
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| 3. |
- Ejdetjärn, Timmy
(författare)
-
The origin of the Hα line profiles in simulated disc galaxies
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Observations of ionised Hα gas in disc galaxies with high star formation rates have ubiquitous and significant line broadening with widths σHα≳50−100 km s−1. To understand whether this broadening reflects gas turbulence within the interstellar medium (ISM) of galactic discs, or arises from off-the-plane emission in mass-loaded galactic winds, we perform radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of isolated Milky Way-mass disc galaxies in a gas-poor (low-redshift) and gas rich (high-redshift) condition and create mock Hα emission line profiles. We find that the vast majority of the Hα emission is confined within the ISM, with extraplanar gas contributing mainly to the extended profile wings. This substantiates the \Halpha emission line as a tracer of mid-plane disc dynamics. We investigate the relative contribution of diffuse and dense Hα emitting gas, corresponding to DIG (ρ≲0.1 cm−3, T∼8 000 K) and HII regions (ρ≳10 cm−3, T∼10 000 K), respectively, and find that DIG contributes ≲10% of the total LHα. However, the DIG can reach upwards of σHα∼60−80 km s−1 while the HII regions are much less turbulent σHα∼10−40 km s−1. This implies that the σHα observed using the full Hα emission line is dependent on the relative Hα contribution from DIG/HII regions and a larger fDIG would shift σHα to higher values. Finally, we show that σHα evolves, in both the DIG and HII regions, with the galaxy gas fraction. Our high-redshift equivalent galaxy is roughly twice as turbulent, except for in the DIG which has a more shallow evolution.
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