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Published December 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Any way the wind blows: quantifying superbubbles and their outflows in simulated galaxies across z ≈ 0-3

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Columbia University
  • 2. Flatiron Institute
  • 3. ROR icon Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Davis
  • 5. ROR icon University of California, San Diego
  • 6. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 7. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We present an investigation of clustered stellar feedback in the form of superbubbles identified within eleven galaxies from the FIRE-2 (Feedback in Realistic Environments) cosmological zoom-in simulation suite, at both cosmic noon (1 < z < 3) and in the local Universe. We study the spatially-resolved multiphase outflows that these supernovae drive, comparing our findings with recent theory and observations. These simulations consist of five LMC-mass galaxies and six Milky Way-mass progenitors (with a minimum baryonic particle mass of m_(b.min) = 7100 M⊙). For all galaxies, we calculate the local and galaxy-averaged mass and energy loading factors from the identified outflows. We also characterize the multiphase morphology and properties of the identified superbubbles, including the 'shell' of cool (T < 10⁵ K) gas and break out of energetic hot (T > 10⁵ K) gas when the shell bursts. We find that these simulations, regardless of redshift, have mass-loading factors and momentum fluxes in the cool gas that largely agree with recent observations. Lastly, we also investigate how methodological choices in measuring outflows can affect loading factors for galactic winds.

Copyright and License

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
 
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Ulrich Steinwandel, Drummond Fielding, and the anonymous referee for useful conversations and comments that greatly improved the manuscript. We ran simulations using: XSEDE, supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) grant ACI-1548562; Blue Waters, supported by the NSF; Frontera allocations AST21010 and AST20016, supported by the NSF and Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC); Pleiades, via the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) High-End Computing (HEC) program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center. LEP is thankful to the Flatiron Institute for continued financial support and resources. The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. BB is grateful for generous support by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. AW received support from NSF via CAREER award AST-2045928 and grant AST-2107772; NASA ATP grant 80NSSC20K0513. C-AF-G was supported by NSF through grants AST-2108230, AST-2307327, and CAREER award AST-1652522; by NASA through grants 17-ATP17-0067 and 21-ATP21-0036; and by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) through grants HST-GO-16730.016-A and JWST-AR-03252.001-A.

Data Availability

The data supporting the plots within this article are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author. A public version of the gizmo code is available at http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~phopkins/Site/GIZMO.html. Additional data including simulation snapshots, initial conditions, and derived data products are available at https://fire.northwestern.edu/data/. The FIRE-2 simulations are publicly available (Wetzel et al. 2023) at http://flathub.flatironinstitute.org/fire.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2406.03535 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Software: http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~phopkins/Site/GIZMO.html (URL)
Dataset: https://fire.northwestern.edu/data/ (URL)
Dataset: http://flathub.flatironinstitute.org/fire (URL)

Funding

National Science Foundation
ACI-1548562
National Science Foundation
AST21010
National Science Foundation
AST20016
Flatiron Institute
Simons Foundation
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
National Science Foundation
AST-2045928
National Science Foundation
AST-2107772
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC20K0513
National Science Foundation
AST-2108230
National Science Foundation
AST-2307327
National Science Foundation
AST-1652522
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
17-ATP17-0067
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
21-ATP21-0036
Space Telescope Science Institute
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
HST-GO-16730.016-A
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
JWST-AR-03252.001-A

Dates

Accepted
2024-11-11
Accepted
Available
2024-11-15
Published
Available
2024-11-29
Corrected and typeset

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, TAPIR, Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Publication Status
Published