The major mechanism to drive turbulence in star-forming galaxies

Abstract

Two competing models, gravitational instability-driven transport and stellar feedback, have been proposed to interpret the high velocity dispersions observed in high-redshift galaxies. We study the major mechanisms to drive the turbulence in star-forming galaxies using a sample of galaxies from the xCOLD GASS survey, selected based on their star-formation rate (SFR) and gas fraction to be in the regime that can best distinguish between the proposed models. We perform Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) integral field spectroscopic (IFS) observations to measure the intrinsic gas velocity dispersions, circular velocities and orbital periods in these galaxies. Comparing the relation between the SFR, velocity dispersion, and gas fraction with predictions of these two theoretical models, we find that our results are most consistent with a model that includes both transport and feedback as drivers of turbulence in the interstellar medium. By contrast, a model where stellar feedback alone drives turbulence under-predicts the observed velocity dispersion in our galaxies, and does not reproduce the observed trend with gas fraction. These observations therefore support the idea that gravitational instability makes a substantial contribution to turbulence in high redshift and high SFR galaxies.

9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• SDSS-IV MaNGA : spatial resolved properties of kinematically misaligned galaxies
• Dynamical modelling and origin of gas turbulence in z $\sim$ 4.5 galaxies
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• Regulation of star formation by large scale gravito-turbulence
• The bi-modal ${}^7$Li distribution of the Milky Way's thin-disk dwarf stars: The role of Galactic-scale events and stellar evolution
• Understanding the radio luminosity function of star-forming galaxies and its cosmological evolution
• SAMI-HI: the connection between global asymmetry in the ionised and neutral atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies
• Halo heating from fluctuating gas in a model dwarf
• A path towards constraining the evolution of the interstellar medium and outflows in the Milky Way using APOGEE