Résumé / Abstract Journal-club_Galaxies

Séminaire/Seminar Galaxies

« [CII] line emission in high-redshift galaxies and accretion-driven turbulence »

Pierre Guillard
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (Paris, France)

Spitzer and Herschel infrared spectroscopy has revealed a population of nearby galaxies with weak star formation and unusually bright emission lines (e.g. [CII], H2), with very broad linewidths. The line luminosities are greatly in excess of that expected by photoelectric heating of the gas, suggesting that they are powered by the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy. This discovery of large masses of gas not associated with star formation reveal the potentially important, but largely unexplored, role that turbulence plays in the energetics and formation of multiphase gas on galactic scales. Is this relevant for filamentary gas accretion onto halos of galaxies? I will discuss a toy model in which some of the gravitational potential energy is transferred into gas accretion streams as they penetrate deeper into halos of young galaxies, and part of that energy is dissipated through a turbulent cascade in the warm infalling gas. We have modeled the excitation of the [CII] line as gas is cooling isobarically during its transition from the warm ionized to cold neutral medium. We find that the contribution of [CII] to the total gas cooling rate is increased to 30% and that this [CII] luminosity fraction is largely independent of metallicity. This may explain the recent ALMA detections of [CII] line emission from very high-redshift galaxies, that is not co-spatial with their UV-continuum and have ratios of [CII] to infrared luminosity that are higher than that expected from star formation.
jeudi 17 octobre 2019 - 11:30
Salle 281
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
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