Mitchell, PD, Schaye, J, Bower, RG and Crain, RA (2020) Galactic outflow rates in the EAGLE simulations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 494 (3). pp. 3971-3997. ISSN 0035-8711

Preview

Text mitchell.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

We present measurements of galactic outflow rates from the EAGLE suite of cosmological simulations. We find that gas is removed from the interstellar medium (ISM) of central galaxies with a dimensionless mass loading factor that scales approximately with circular velocity as V−3/2c in the low-mass regime where stellar feedback dominates. Feedback from active galactic nuclei causes an upturn in the mass loading for halo masses >1012M⊙⁠. We find that more gas outflows through the halo virial radius than is removed from the ISM of galaxies, particularly at low redshifts, implying substantial mass loading within the circumgalactic medium. Outflow velocities span a wide range at a given halo mass/redshift, and on average increase positively with redshift and halo mass up to M200∼1012M⊙⁠. Outflows exhibit a bimodal flow pattern on circumgalactic scales, aligned with the galactic minor axis. We present a number of like-for-like comparisons to outflow rates from other recent cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, and show that comparing the propagation of galactic winds as a function of radius reveals substantial discrepancies between different models. Relative to some other simulations, EAGLE favours a scenario for stellar feedback where agreement with the galaxy stellar mass function is achieved by removing smaller amounts of gas from the ISM, but with galactic winds that then propagate and entrain ambient gas out to larger radii.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	19 Nov 2020 13:34
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 06:21
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/staa938
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/14041

View Item