Physics of Prodigious Lyman Continuum Leakers

Abstract

An analysis of the dynamics of a star formation event is performed. It is shown that galaxies able to drive leftover gas to sufficient altitudes in a few million years are characterized by two basic properties: small sizes (<1kpc) and high star formation rate surface densities (Sigma_SFR > 10 Msun/yr/kpc2). For the parameter space of relevance, the outflow is primarily driven by supernovae with radiation pressure being significant but subdominant. Our analysis provides the unifying physical origin for a diverse set of observed LyC leakers, including the green-peas galaxies, [SII]-weak galaxies, Lyman-alpha emitters, with these two characteristics as the common denominator. Among verifiable physical properties of LyC leakers, we predict that (1) the newly formed stellar masses are are typically in the range of 1e8-1e10 Msun, except perhaps ULIRGs, (2) the outflow velocities are typically in the range typically of 100-600km/s, but may exceed 1e3 km/s in ULIRGs, with a strong positive correlation between the stellar masses formed and the outflow velocities, (3) the overall escape fraction of galaxies is expected to increase with increasing redshift, given the cosmological trend that galaxies become denser and more compact with increasing redshift. In addition, two interesting by-product predictions are also borne out. First, ULIRGs appear to be in a parameter region where they should be prodigious LyC leakers, unless there is a large ram-pressure. Second, Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) are not supposed to be prodigious LyC leakers in our model, given their claimed effective radii exceeding 1kpc.

15 pages, 4 figures, in press of ApJL

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Inferring the properties of the sources of reionization using the morphological spectra of the ionized regions
• Lyman continuum leakage in faint star-forming galaxies at redshift z=3-3.5 probed by gamma-ray bursts
• Lyman-Alpha Escape from Low-Mass, Compact, High-Redshift Galaxies