Journal article
The impact of cosmic rays on the interstellar medium and galactic outflows of Milky Way analogues
- Abstract:
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During the last decade, cosmological simulations have managed to reproduce realistic and morphologically diverse galaxies, spanning the Hubble sequence. Central to this success was a phenomenological calibration of the few included feedback processes, while glossing over higher complexity baryonic physics. This approach diminishes the predictive power of such simulations, preventing to further our understanding of galaxy formation. To tackle this fundamental issue, we investigate the impact of cosmic rays (CRs) and magnetic fields on the interstellar medium and the launching of outflows in a cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy. We find that including CRs decreases the stellar mass of the galaxy by a factor of 10 at high redshift and ∼4 at cosmic noon, leading to a stellar mass to halo mass ratio in good agreement with abundance matching models. Such decrease is caused by two effects: (i) a reduction of cold, high-density, star-forming gas, and (ii) a larger fraction of supernova (SN) events exploding at lower densities, where they have a higher impact. SN-injected CRs produce enhanced, multiphase galactic outflows, which are accelerated by CR pressure gradients in the circumgalactic medium of the galaxy. While the mass budget of these outflows is dominated by the warm ionized gas, warm neutral and cold gas phases contribute significantly at high redshifts. Importantly, our work shows that future JWST observations of galaxies and their multiphase outflows across cosmic time have the ability to constrain the role of CRs in regulating star formation.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 8.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/mnras/stae1083
Authors
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 530
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 3617-3640
- Publication date:
- 2024-04-22
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-04-16
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1365-2966
- ISSN:
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0035-8711
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1993349
- Local pid:
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pubs:1993349
- Deposit date:
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2024-09-12
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Montero et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 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.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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