Starburst and post-starburst high-redshift protogalaxies: The feedback impact of high energy cosmic rays

Abstract

Quenching of star-formation has been identified in many starburst and post-starburst galaxies, indicating burst-like star-formation histories (SFH) in the primordial Universe. We have investigated the role of high energy cosmic rays (CRs) in such environments, particularly how they could contribute to this burst-like SFH via quenching and feedback. These high energy particles interact with the baryon and radiation fields of their host via hadronic processes to produce secondary leptons. The secondary particles then also interact with ambient radiation fields to generate X-rays through inverse-Compton scattering. In addition, they can thermalise directly with the semi-ionised medium via Coulomb processes. Heating at a rate of $\sim 10^{-25}\text{erg}{\text{cm}}^{-3}{\text{s}}^{-1}$ can be attained by Coulomb processes in a star-forming galaxy with one core-collapse SN event per decade, and this is sufficient to cause quenching of star-formation. At high-redshift, a substantial amount of CR secondary electron energy can be diverted into inverse-Compton X-ray emission. This yields an X-ray luminosity of above $10^{41}\text{erg}{\text{s}}^{-1}$ by redshift $z=7$ which drives a further heating effect, operating over larger scales. This would be able to halt inflowing cold gas filaments, strangulating subsequent star-formation. We selected a sample of 16 starburst and post-starburst galaxies at $7\lesssim z\lesssim 9$ and determine the star-formation rates they could have sustained. We applied a model with CR injection, propagation and heating to calculate energy deposition rates in these 16 sources. Our calculations show that CR feedback cannot be neglected as it has the strength to suppress star-formation in these systems. We also show that their currently observed quiescence is consistent with the suffocation of cold inflows, probably by a combination of X-ray and CR heating.

30 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in A&A; abstract abridged. V2: updates to match published version (minor typo corrections)

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• A hydrodynamical study of outflows in starburst galaxies with different driving mechanisms
• Characterising the signatures of star-forming galaxies in the extra-galactic $\gamma$-ray background
• The extragalactic $\gamma$-ray background: imprints from the physical properties and evolution of star-forming galaxy populations
• Evolution and feedback of AGN Jets of different Cosmic-ray Composition
• Evolution of thermal and nonthermal radio continuum emission on kpc scales--Predictions for SKA
• Faint Galaxy Number Counts in the Durhamand SDSS Catalogues
• Outflows from starburst galaxies with various driving mechanisms and their X-ray properties
• The contribution of distant sources to the observed flux of ultra high-energy cosmic rays