Radiation hydrodynamics simulations of the evolution of the diffuse ionized gas in disc galaxies
Date
09/2019Grant ID
ST/M001296/1
Metadata
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Abstract
There is strong evidence that the diffuse ionized gas (DIG) in disc galaxies is photoionized by radiation from UV luminous O and B stars in the galactic disc, both from observations and detailed numerical models. However, it is still not clear what mechanism is responsible for providing the necessary pressure support for a diffuse gas layer at kpc-scale above the disc. In this work, we investigate if the pressure increase caused by photoionization can provide this support. We run self-consistent radiation hydrodynamics (RHD) models of a gaseous disc in an external potential. We find that photoionization feedback can drive low levels of turbulence in the dense galactic disc, and that it provides pressure support for an extended diffuse gas layer. Our results show that there is a natural fine-tuning between the total ionizing radiation budget of the sources in the galaxy and the amount of gas in the different ionization phases of the interstellar medium, and provide the first fully consistent RHD model of the DIG.
Citation
Vandenbroucke , B & Wood , K 2019 , ' Radiation hydrodynamics simulations of the evolution of the diffuse ionized gas in disc galaxies ' , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , vol. 488 , no. 2 , pp. 1977-1986 . https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz1841
Publication
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0035-8711Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz1841
Description
BV and KW acknowledge support from STFC grant ST/M001296/1. The equipment was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants ST/K000373/1 and ST/R002363/1 and STFC DiRAC Operations grant ST/R001014/1.Collections
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