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Galactic outflow rates in the EAGLE simulations

Crain, Robert A.; Bower, Richard G.; Schaye, Joop; Mitchell, Peter D.

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Authors

Robert A. Crain

Richard G. Bower

Joop Schaye

Peter D. Mitchell



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 (AGN) causes an upturn in the mass loading for halo masses >1012 M⊙. We find that more gas outflows through the halo virial radius than is removed from the ISM of galaxies, particularly at low redshift, implying substantial mass loading within the circum-galactic medium (CGM). 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 ∼ 1012 M⊙. Outflows exhibit a bimodal flow pattern on circum-galactic 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.

Citation

Crain, R. A., Bower, R. G., Schaye, J., & Mitchell, P. D. (2020). Galactic outflow rates in the EAGLE simulations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484(3), 3971-3997. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa938

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 31, 2020
Online Publication Date Apr 9, 2020
Publication Date May 31, 2020
Deposit Date Apr 10, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 484
Issue 3
Pages 3971-3997
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa938

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Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ©: 2020 The Author(s) . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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