Cosmic Ray Feedback Research Articles

IMPACT OF SUPERNOVA AND COSMIC-RAY DRIVING ON THE SURFACE BRIGHTNESS OF THE GALACTIC HALO IN SOFT X-RAYS

The halo of the Milky Way contains a hot plasma with a surface brightness in soft X-rays of the order $10^{-12}$erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ deg$^{-2}$. The origin of this gas is unclear, but so far numerical models of galactic star formation have failed to reproduce such a large surface brightness by several orders of magnitude. In this paper, we analyze simulations of the turbulent, magnetized, multi-phase interstellar medium including thermal feedback by supernova explosions as well as cosmic-ray feedback. We include a time-dependent chemical network, self-shielding by gas and dust, and self-gravity. Pure thermal feedback alone is sufficient to produce the observed surface brightness, although it is very sensitive to the supernova rate. Cosmic rays suppress this sensitivity and reduce the surface brightness because they drive cooler outflows. Self-gravity has by far the largest effect because it accumulates the diffuse gas in the disk in dense clumps and filaments, so that supernovae exploding in voids can eject a large amount of hot gas into the halo. This can boost the surface brightness by several orders of magnitude. Although our simulations do not reach a steady state, all simulations produce surface brightness values of the same order of magnitude as the observations, with the exact value depending sensitively on the simulation parameters. We conclude that star formation feedback alone is sufficient to explain the origin of the hot halo gas, but measurements of the surface brightness alone do not provide useful diagnostics for the study of galactic star formation.

Conditions for HD cooling in the first galaxies revisited: interplay between far-ultraviolet and cosmic ray feedback in Population III star formation

HD dominates the cooling of primordial clouds with enhanced ionization, e.g. shock-heated clouds in structure formation or supernova remnants, relic HII regions of Pop III stars, and clouds with cosmic-ray (CR) irradiation. There, the temperature decreases to several 10 K and the characteristic stellar mass decreases to $\sim 10\ {\rm M}_{\odot}$, in contrast with first stars formed from undisturbed pristine clouds ($\sim 100\ {\rm M}_{\odot}$). However, without CR irradiation, even weak far ultra-violet (FUV) irradiation suppresses HD formation/cooling. Here, we examine conditions for HD cooling in primordial clouds including both FUV and CR feedback. At the beginning of collapse, the shock-compressed gas cools with its density increasing, while the relic HII region gas cools at a constant density. Moreover, shocks tend to occur in denser environments than HII regions. Owing to the higher column density and the more effective shielding, the critical FUV intensity for HD cooling in a shock-compressed gas becomes $\sim 10$ times higher than in relic HII regions. Consequently, in the shock-compressed gas, the critical FUV intensity exceeds the background level for most of the redshift we consider ($6 \lesssim z \lesssim 15$), while in relic HII regions, HD cooling becomes effective after the CR intensity increases enough at $z \lesssim 10$. Our result suggests that less massive ($\sim 10\ {\rm M}_{\odot}$) Pop III stars may be more common than previously considered and could be the dominant population of Pop III stars.

Modelling injection and feedback of cosmic rays in grid-based cosmological simulations: effects on cluster outskirts

We present a numerical scheme, implemented in the cosmological adaptive mesh refinement code ENZO, to model the injection of Cosmic Ray (CR) particles at shocks, their advection and their dynamical feedback on thermal baryonic gas. We give a description of the algorithms and show their tests against analytical and idealized one-dimensional problems. Our implementation is able to track the injection of CR energy, the spatial advection of CR energy and its feedback on the thermal gas in run-time. This method is applied to study CR acceleration and evolution in cosmological volumes, with both fixed and variable mesh resolution. We compare the properties of galaxy clusters with and without CRs, for a sample of high-resolution clusters with different dynamical states. At variance with similar simulations based on Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics, we report that the inclusion of CR feedback in our method decreases the central gas density in clusters, thus reducing the X-ray and Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from the clusters centre, while enhancing the gas density and its related observables near the virial radius.

COSMIC RAY TRANSPORT THROUGH GYRORESONANCE INSTABILITY IN COMPRESSIBLE TURBULENCE

We study the nonlinear growth of kinetic gyroresonance instability of cosmic rays (CRs) induced by large scale compressible turbulence. This feedback of cosmic rays on turbulence was shown to induce an important scattering mechanism in addition to direct interaction with the compressible turbulence. The linear growth is bound to saturate due to the wave-particle interactions. By balancing increase of CR anisotropy via the large scale compression and its decrease via the wave-particle scattering, we find the steady state solutions. The nonlinear suppression due to the wave-particle scattering limit the energy range of CRs that can excite the instabilities and be scattered by the induced slab waves. The direct interaction with large scale compressible modes still appears to be the dominant mechanism for isotropization of high energy cosmic rays (> 100 GeV).

THE PHYSICS OF THE FAR-INFRARED-RADIO CORRELATION. I. CALORIMETRY, CONSPIRACY, AND IMPLICATIONS

(Abridged) The far-infrared (FIR) and radio luminosities of star-forming galaxies are linearly correlated over a very wide range in star formation rate, from normal spirals like the Milky Way to the most intense starbursts. Using one-zone models of cosmic ray (CR) injection, cooling, and escape in star-forming galaxies, we attempt to reproduce the observed FIR-radio correlation over its entire span. We show that ~2% of the kinetic energy from supernova explosions must go into primary CR electrons and that ~10 - 20% must go into primary CR protons. Secondary electrons and positrons are likely comparable to or dominate primary electrons in dense starburst galaxies. We discuss the implications of our models for the magnetic field strengths of starbursts, the detectability of starbursts by Fermi, and cosmic ray feedback. Overall, our models indicate that both CR protons and electrons escape from low surface density galaxies, but lose most of their energy before escaping dense starbursts. The FIR-radio correlation is caused by a combination of the efficient cooling of CR electrons (calorimetry) in starbursts and a conspiracy of several factors. For lower surface density galaxies, the decreasing radio emission caused by CR escape is balanced by the decreasing FIR emission caused by the low effective UV dust opacity. In starbursts, bremsstrahlung, ionization, and Inverse Compton cooling decrease the radio emission, but they are countered by secondary electrons/positrons and the decreasing critical synchrotron frequency, which both increase the radio emission. Our conclusions hold for a broad range of variations on our fiducial model.

THE EDDINGTON LIMIT IN COSMIC RAYS: AN EXPLANATION FOR THE OBSERVED LACK OF LOW-MASS RADIO-LOUD QUASARS AND THEM•–M⋆RELATION

We present a feedback mechanism for supermassive black holes and their host bulges that operates during epochs of radio-loud quasar activity. In the radio cores of relativistic quasar jets, internal shocks convert a fraction of ordered bulk kinetic energy into randomized relativistic ions, or in other words cosmic rays. By employing a phenomenologically-motivated jet model, we show that enough 1-100 GeV cosmic rays escape the radio core into the host galaxy to break the Eddington limit in cosmic rays. As a result, hydrostatic balance is lost and a cosmic ray momentum-driven wind develops, expelling gas from the host galaxy and thus self-limiting the black hole and bulge growth. Although the interstellar cosmic ray power is much smaller than the quasar photon luminosity, cosmic rays provide a stronger feedback than UV photons, since they exchange momentum with the galactic gas much more efficiently. The amount of energy released into the host galaxy as cosmic rays, per unit of black hole rest mass energy, is independent of black hole mass. It follows that radio-loud jets should be more prevalent in relatively massive systems since they sit in galaxies with relatively deep gravitational potentials. Therefore, jet-powered cosmic ray feedback not only self-regulates the black hole and bulge growth, but also provides an explanation for the lack of radio-loud activity in relatively small galaxies. By employing basic known facts regarding the physical conditions in radio cores, we approximately reproduce both the slope and the normalization of the M_{BH}-M_{Bulge} relation.

Simulations of cosmic-ray feedback by active galactic nuclei in galaxy clusters

Feedback processes by active galactic nuclei (AGN) appear to be a key for understanding the nature of the very X-ray luminous cool cores found in many clusters of galaxies. We investigate a numerical model for AGN feedback where for the first time a relativistic particle population in AGN-inflated bubbles is followed within a full cosmological context. In our high-resolution simulations of galaxy cluster formation, we assume that black hole accretion is accompanied by energy feedback that occurs in two different modes, depending on the accretion rate itself. At high accretion rates, a small fraction of the radiated energy is coupled thermally to the gas surrounding the quasar, while in a low-accretion state, mechanically efficient feedback in the form of hot, buoyant bubbles that are inflated by radio activity is considered. Unlike previous work, we inject a non-thermal particle population of relativistic protons into the AGN bubbles, instead of adopting a purely thermal heating. We then follow the subsequent evolution of the cosmic-ray (CR) plasma inside the bubbles, considering both its hydrodynamical interactions and dissipation processes relevant to the CR population. This permits us to analyse the impact of CR bubbles on the surrounding intracluster medium, and in particular, how this contrasts with the purely thermal case. Due to the different buoyancy of relativistic plasma and the comparatively long CR dissipation time-scale, we find substantial changes in the evolution of clusters as a result of CR feedback. In particular, the non-thermal population can provide significant pressure support in central cluster regions at low thermal temperatures, providing a natural explanation for the decreasing temperature profiles found in cool core clusters. At the same time, the morphologies of the bubbles and of the induced X-ray cavities show a striking similarity to observational findings. AGN feedback with CRs also proves efficient in regulating cluster cooling flows so that the total baryon fraction in stars becomes limited to realistic values of the order of ∼10 per cent, more than a factor of 3 reduction compared with cosmological simulations that only consider radiative cooling and supernova feedback. We find that the partial CR support of the intracluster gas also affects the expected signal of the thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect, with typical modifications of the integrated Compton-y parameter within the virial radius of the order of ∼10 per cent.

The Eddington Limit in Cosmic Rays: An Explanation for the Observed Faintness of Starbursting Galaxies

We show that the luminosity of a star forming galaxy is capped by the production and subsequent expulsion of cosmic rays from its interstellar medium. By defining an Eddington luminosity in cosmic rays, we show that the star formation rate of a given galaxy is limited by its mass content and the cosmic ray mean free path. When the cosmic ray luminosity and pressure reaches a critical value as a result of vigorous star formation, hydrostatic balance is lost, a cosmic ray-driven wind develops, and star formation is choked off. Cosmic ray pressure-driven winds are likely to produce wind velocities significantly in excess of the galactic escape velocity. It is possible that cosmic ray feedback results in the Faber-Jackson relation for a plausible set of input parameters that describe cosmic ray production and transport, which are calibrated by observations of the Milky Way's interstellar cosmic rays as well as other galaxies.

Cosmic ray feedback in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation

It is well known that cosmic rays contribute significantly to the pressure of the interstellar medium in our own Galaxy, suggesting that they may play an important role in regulating star formation during the formation and evolution of galaxies. We here discuss a novel numerical treatment of the physics of cosmic rays and its implementation in the parallel smoothed particle hydrodynamics code GADGET-2. In our methodology, the non-thermal cosmic ray population of each gaseous fluid element is approximated by a simple power law spectrum in particle momentum, characterized by an amplitude, a cut-off, and a fixed slope. Adiabatic compression and a number of physical source and sink terms are modelled which modify the cosmic ray pressure of each particle. The most important sources considered are injection by supernovae and diffusive shock acceleration, while the primary sinks are thermalization by Coulomb interactions, and catastrophic losses by hadronic interactions. We also include diffusion of cosmic rays. Using a number of test problems, we show that our scheme is numerically robust and efficient, allowing us to carry out the first cosmological structure formation simulations that account for cosmic ray physics, together with radiative cooling and star formation. In simulations of isolated galaxies, we find that cosmic rays can significantly reduce the star formation efficiencies of small galaxies, with virial velocities below ~, an effect that becomes progressively stronger towards low-mass scales. In cosmological simulations of the formation of dwarf galaxies at high redshift, we find that the total mass-to-light ratio of small halos and the faint end of the luminosity function are affected. The latter becomes slightly flatter. When cosmic ray acceleration in shock waves is followed as well, we find that up to of the energy dissipated at structure formation shocks can appear as cosmic ray pressure at redshifts around , but this fraction drops to ~ at low redshifts when the shock distribution becomes increasingly dominated by lower Mach numbers. Despite this large cosmic ray energy content in the high-redshift intergalactic medium, the flux power spectrum of the Lyman-α forest is only affected on very small scales of , and at a weak level of . Within virialized objects, we find lower contributions of CR-pressure, due to the increased efficiency of loss processes at higher densities, the lower Mach numbers of shocks inside halos, and the softer adiabatic index of CRs, which disadvantages them when a composite of thermal gas and cosmic rays is adiabatically compressed. The total energy in cosmic rays relative to the thermal energy within the virial radius drops from 20% for halos to 5% for rich galaxy clusters of mass in non-radiative simulations. Interestingly, the lower effective adiabatic index also increases the compressibility of the intrahalo medium, an effect that slightly increases the central concentration of the gas and the baryon fraction within the virial radius. We find that this can enhance the cooling rate onto central cluster galaxies, even though the galaxies in the cluster periphery become slightly less luminous as a result of cosmic ray feedback.