http://arxiv.org/abs/1710.04283
The escape of ultraviolet photons from the densest regions of the interstellar medium (ISM) — Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) — is a poorly constrained parameter which is vital to understanding the ionization of the ISM and the intergalactic medium. We characterize the escape fraction, f${\text{esc,GMC}}$, from a suite of individual GMC simulations with masses in the range 10$^{4-6}$ M${\odot}$ using the adaptive-mesh refinement code FLASH. We find significantly different f${\text{esc,GMC}}$ depending on the GMC mass which can reach $>$90\% in the evolution of 5$\times$10$^4$ and 10$^{5}$ M${\odot}$ clouds or remain low at $\sim$5\% for most of the lifetime of more massive GMCs. All clouds show fluctuations over short, sub-Myr timescales produced by flickering HII regions. We combine our results to calculate the total escape fraction (f${\text{esc,tot}}$) from GMC populations in dwarf starburst and spiral galaxies by randomly drawing clouds from a GMC mass distribution (dN/dM$\propto$M$^{\alpha}$, where $\alpha$ is either -1.5 or -2.5) over fixed time intervals. We find typical f${\text{esc,tot}}$ values of 8\% for both the dwarf and spiral models. The fluctuations of f${\text{esc,tot}}$, however, are much larger for the dwarf models with values as high as 90\%. The photons escaping from the 5$\times$10$^4$ and 10$^{5}$ M${\odot}$ GMCs are the dominant contributors to f${\text{esc,tot}}$ in all cases. We also show that the accompanying star formation rates (SFRs) of our model ($\sim$2$\times$10$^{-2}$ and 0.73 M${\odot}$yr$^{-1}$) are consistent with observations of SFRs in dwarf starburst and spiral galaxies, respectively.
C. Howard, R. Pudritz, B. Harris, et. al.
Fri, 13 Oct 17
29/56
Comments: 14 pages, 7 figures, submitted to MNRAS