Title:	Superbubble breakout and galactic winds from disc galaxies
Authors:	Roy, Arpita Nath, Biman B. Sharma, Prateek Shchekinov, Yuri
Keywords:	shock waves ISM: bubbles galaxie ISM
Issue Date:	1-Oct-2013
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Citation:	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013, Vol. 434, p3572-3581
Abstract:	We study the conditions for disc galaxies to produce superbubbles that can break out of the disc and produce a galactic wind. We argue that the threshold surface density of supernovae rate for seeding a wind depends on the ability of superbubble energetics to compensate for radiative cooling. We first adapt Kompaneets formalism for expanding bubbles in a stratified medium to the case of continuous energy injection and include the effects of radiative cooling in the shell. With the help of hydrodynamic simulations, we then study the evolution of superbubbles evolving in stratified discs with typical disc parameters. We identify two crucial energy injection rates that differ in their effects, the corresponding breakout ranging from being gentle to a vigorous one. (a) Superbubbles that break out of the disc with a Mach number of the order of 2-3 correspond to an energy injection rate of the order of 10-4 erg cm-2 s-1, which is relevant for disc galaxies with synchrotron emitting gas in the extra-planar regions. (b) A larger energy injection threshold, of the order of 10-3 erg cm-2 s-1, or equivalently, a star formation surface density of ˜0.1 M⊙ yr-1 kpc-2, corresponds to superbubbles with a Mach number ˜5-10. While the milder superbubbles can be produced by large OB associations, the latter kind requires super-starclusters. These derived conditions compare well with observations of disc galaxies with winds and the existence of multiphase halo gas. Furthermore, we find that contrary to the general belief that superbubbles fragment through Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability when they reach a vertical height of the order of the scaleheight, the superbubbles are first affected by thermal instability for typical disc parameters and that RT instability takes over when the shells reach a distance of approximately twice the scaleheight.
Description:	Restricted Access. An open-access version is available at arXiv.org (one of the alternative locations)
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/5851
ISSN:	1365-2966 - (online) 0035-8711
Alternative Location:	http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013MNRAS.434.3572R http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.2664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt1279
Copyright:	2013 The authors & the Royal Astronomical Society.
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (A&A)

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