No Arabic abstract
We use a model of the Galactic fountain to simulate the neutral-hydrogen emission of the Milky Way Galaxy. The model was developed to account for data on external galaxies with sensitive HI data. For appropriate parameter values, the model reproduces well the HI emission observed at Intermediate Velocities. The optimal parameters imply that cool gas is ionised as it is blasted out of the disc, but becomes neutral when its vertical velocity has been reduced by ~30 per cent. The parameters also imply that cooling of coronal gas in the wakes of fountain clouds transfers gas from the virial-temperature corona to the disc at ~2 Mo/yr. This rate agrees, to within the uncertainties with the accretion rate required to sustain the Galaxys star formation without depleting the supply of interstellar gas. We predict the radial profile of accretion, which is an important input for models of Galactic chemical evolution. The parameter values required for the model to fit the Galaxys HI data are in excellent agreement with values estimated from external galaxies and hydrodynamical studies of cloud-corona interaction. Our model does not reproduce the observed HI emission at High Velocities, consistent with High Velocity Clouds being extragalactic in origin. If our model is correct, the structure of the Galaxys outer HI disc differs materially from that used previously to infer the distribution of dark matter on the Galaxys outskirts.
We investigate data from the Galactic Effelsberg--Bonn HI Survey (EBHIS), supplemented with data from the third release of the Galactic All Sky Survey (GASS III) observed at Parkes. We explore the all sky distribution of the local Galactic HI gas with $|v_{rm LSR}| < 25 $ kms$^{-1}$ on angular scales of 11 to 16. Unsharp masking (USM) is applied to extract small scale features. We find cold filaments that are aligned with polarized dust emission and conclude that the cold neutral medium (CNM) is mostly organized in sheets that are, because of projection effects, observed as filaments. These filaments are associated with dust ridges, aligned with the magnetic field measured on the structures by Planck at 353 GHz. The CNM above latitudes $|b|>20^circ$ is described by a log-normal distribution, with a median Doppler temperature $T_{rm D} = 223$ K, derived from observed line widths that include turbulent contributions. The median neutral hydrogen (HI) column density is $N_{rm HI} simeq 10^{19.1},{rm cm^{-2}}$. These CNM structures are embedded within a warm neutral medium (WNM) with $N_{rm HI} simeq 10^{20} {rm cm^{-2}}$. Assuming an average distance of 100 pc, we derive for the CNM sheets a thickness of $< 0.3$ pc. Adopting a magnetic field strength of $B_{rm tot} = (6.0 pm 1.8)mu$G, proposed by Heiles & Troland 2005, and assuming that the CNM filaments are confined by magnetic pressure, we estimate a thickness of 0.09 pc. Correspondingly the median volume density is in the range $ 14 < n < 47 {rm cm^{-3}}$.
We address the spatial scale, ionization structure, mass and metal content of gas at the Milky Way disk-halo interface detected as absorption in the foreground of seven closely-spaced, high-latitude halo blue horizontal branch stars (BHBs) with heights z = 3 - 14 kpc. We detect transitions that trace multiple ionization states (e.g. CaII, FeII, SiIV, CIV) with column densities that remain constant with height from the disk, indicating that the gas most likely lies within z < 3.4 kpc. The intermediate ionization state gas traced by CIV and SiIV is strongly correlated over the full range of transverse separations probed by our sightlines, indicating large, coherent structures greater than 1 kpc in size. The low ionization state material traced by CaII and FeII does not exhibit a correlation with either N$_{rm HI}$ or transverse separation, implying cloudlets or clumpiness on scales less than 10 pc. We find that the observed ratio log(N_SiIV/ N_CIV), with a median value of -0.69+/-0.04, is sensitive to the total carbon content of the ionized gas under the assumption of either photoionization or collisional ionization. The only self-consistent solution for photoionized gas requires that Si be depleted onto dust by 0.35 dex relative to the solar Si/C ratio, similar to the level of Si depletion in DLAs and in the Milky Way ISM. The allowed range of values for the areal mass infall rate of warm, ionized gas at the disk-halo interface is 0.0003 < dM_gas / dtdA [M_sun kpc^-2 yr^-] < 0.006. Our data support a physical scenario in which the Milky Way is fed by complex, multiphase processes at its disk-halo interface that involve kpc-scale ionized envelopes or streams containing pc-scale, cool clumps.
The hot gaseous halos of galaxies likely contain a large amount of mass and are an integral part of galaxy formation and evolution. The Milky Way has a 2e6 K halo that is detected in emission and by absorption in the OVII resonance line against bright background AGNs, and for which the best current model is an extended spherical distribution. Using XMM-Newton RGS data, we measure the Doppler shifts of the OVII absorption-line centroids toward an ensemble of AGNs. These Doppler shifts constrain the dynamics of the hot halo, ruling out a stationary halo at about 3sigma and a corotating halo at 2sigma, and leading to a best-fit rotational velocity of 183+/-41 km/s for an extended halo model. These results suggest that the hot gas rotates and that it contains an amount of angular momentum comparable to that in the stellar disk. We examined the possibility of a model with a kinematically distinct disk and spherical halo. To be consistent with the emission-line X-ray data the disk must contribute less than 10% of the column density, implying that the Doppler shifts probe motion in the extended hot halo.
We analyze radial and azimuthal variations of the phase balance between the molecular and atomic ISM in the Milky Way. In particular, the azimuthal variations -- between spiral arm and interarm regions -- are analyzed without any explicit definition of spiral arm locations. We show that the molecular gas mass fraction, i.e., fmol=H2/ (HI+H2) in mass, varies predominantly in the radial direction: starting from ~100% at the center, remaining ~>50% (~>60%) to R~6kpc, and decreasing to ~10-20% (~50%) at R=8.5 kpc when averaged over the whole disk thickness (in the mid plane). Azimuthal, arm-interarm variations are secondary: only ~20%, in the globally molecule-dominated inner MW, but becoming larger, ~40-50%, in the atom-dominated outskirts. This suggests that in the inner MW, the gas stays highly molecular (fmol>50%) as it goes from an interarm region, into a spiral arm, and back into the next interarm region. Stellar feedback does not dissociate molecules much, and the coagulation and fragmentation of molecular clouds dominate the evolution of the ISM at these radii. The trend differs in the outskirts, where the gas phase is globally atomic (fmol<50%). The HI and H2 phases cycle through spiral arm passage there. These different regimes of ISM evolution are also seen in external galaxies (e.g., LMC, M33, and M51). We explain the radial gradient of fmol by a simple flow continuity model. The effects of spiral arms on this analysis are illustrated in Appendix.
We compare molecular gas properties in the starbursting center of NGC253 and the Milky Way Galactic Center (GC) on scales of ~1-100 pc using dendograms and resolution-, area- and noise-matched datasets in CO (1-0) and CO (3-2). We find that the size-line width relations in NGC253 and the GC have similar slope, but NGC253 has larger line widths by factors of ~2-3. The $sigma^2/R$ dependency on column density shows that, in the GC, on scales of 10-100 pc the kinematics of gas over $N>3times10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ are compatible with gravitationally bound structures. In NGC253 this is only the case for column densities $N>3times10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$. The increased line widths in NGC253 originate in the lower column density gas. This high-velocity dispersion, not gravitationally self-bound gas is likely in transient structures created by the combination of high average densities and feedback in the starburst. The high densities turns the gas molecular throughout the volume of the starburst, and the injection of energy and momentum by feedback significantly increases the velocity dispersion at a given spatial scale over what is observed in the GC.