TY - JOUR
T1 - Radiation feedback in ULIRGs
T2 - Are photons movers and shakers?
AU - Davis, Shane W.
AU - Jiang, Yan Fei
AU - Stone, James McLellan
AU - Murray, Norman
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - We perform multidimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations to study the impact of radiation forces on atmospheres composed of dust and gas. Our setup closely follows that of Krumholz & Thompson, assuming that dust and gas are well-coupled and that the radiation field is characterized by blackbodies with temperatures ≳ 80 K, as might be found in ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs). In agreement with previous work, we find that Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities develop in radiation supported atmospheres, leading to inhomogeneities that limit momentum exchange between radiation and dusty gas, and eventually providing a near balance of the radiation and gravitational forces. However, the evolution of the velocity and spatial distributions of the gas differs significantly from previous work, which utilized a less accurate flux-limited diffusion (FLD) method. Our variable Eddington tensor simulations show continuous net acceleration of the gas and never reach a steady state. In contrast, our FLD results show little net acceleration of the gas and settle into a quasi-steady, turbulent state with low velocity dispersion. The discrepancies result primarily from the inability of FLD to properly model the variation of the radiation field around structures that are less than a few optical depths across. We consider the effect of varying the optical depth and study the differences between two-dimensional and three-dimensional runs. We conclude that radiation feedback remains a plausible mechanism for driving high-Mach number turbulence in ULIRGs with sufficiently high optical depths. We discuss implications for observed systems and galactic-scale numerical simulations of feedback.
AB - We perform multidimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations to study the impact of radiation forces on atmospheres composed of dust and gas. Our setup closely follows that of Krumholz & Thompson, assuming that dust and gas are well-coupled and that the radiation field is characterized by blackbodies with temperatures ≳ 80 K, as might be found in ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs). In agreement with previous work, we find that Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities develop in radiation supported atmospheres, leading to inhomogeneities that limit momentum exchange between radiation and dusty gas, and eventually providing a near balance of the radiation and gravitational forces. However, the evolution of the velocity and spatial distributions of the gas differs significantly from previous work, which utilized a less accurate flux-limited diffusion (FLD) method. Our variable Eddington tensor simulations show continuous net acceleration of the gas and never reach a steady state. In contrast, our FLD results show little net acceleration of the gas and settle into a quasi-steady, turbulent state with low velocity dispersion. The discrepancies result primarily from the inability of FLD to properly model the variation of the radiation field around structures that are less than a few optical depths across. We consider the effect of varying the optical depth and study the differences between two-dimensional and three-dimensional runs. We conclude that radiation feedback remains a plausible mechanism for driving high-Mach number turbulence in ULIRGs with sufficiently high optical depths. We discuss implications for observed systems and galactic-scale numerical simulations of feedback.
KW - ISM: jets and outflows
KW - galaxies: ISM
KW - hydrodynamics
KW - methods: numerical
KW - radiative transfer
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U2 - 10.1088/0004-637X/796/2/107
DO - 10.1088/0004-637X/796/2/107
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84910596402
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 796
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 107
ER -