Integral Field Spectroscopic Constraints on the Physics of Galactic Winds and Gas Accretion

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Astronomers want to understand why some regions in a galaxy form stars and other regions do not. In-flowing gas delivers star-building material, but exploding stars create outflowing winds, removing material, and preventing further star formation. Rubin and her collaborators will study the inflow and outflow of gas in star forming regions in order to understand how gas flows shape galaxies. To promote diversity in astronomy local high school and community college students and beginning undergraduates will be recruited for an annual summer school. The students will participate in research projects and learn about computer programming. Empirical constraints on the kinematics and morphology of cool (T 1000 K) gas flows around galaxies are crucial to building a complete theory of galaxy formation. Archival observations taken with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the Very Large Telescope of ~45 nearby star-forming galaxies will be analyzed to conduct a kinematic study of interstellar NaI absorption. This will constrain the cool wind velocity and the incidence of cool gas accretion on ~50 – 100 pc scales, and establish the relationship between these processes and local star formation activity. A comparative analysis of absorption from cool galactic gas flows predicted in the FIRE-2 suite of cosmological galaxy formation simulations will be made. This project will produce a novel set of empirical constraints on the energetics of galactic winds and on the morphology of galactic gas accretion.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.