Resolving nearby dust clouds Leike, R. H.; Glatzle, M.; Enßlin, T. A.
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
07/2020, Volume:
639
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Aims.
Mapping the interstellar medium in 3D provides a wealth of insights into its inner working. The Milky Way is the only galaxy for which detailed 3D mapping can be achieved in principle. In this ...paper, we reconstruct the dust density in and around the local super-bubble.
Methods.
The combined data from surveys such as
Gaia
, 2MASS, PANSTARRS, and ALLWISE provide the necessary information to make detailed maps of the interstellar medium in our surrounding. To this end, we used variational inference and Gaussian processes to model the dust extinction density, exploiting its intrinsic correlations.
Results.
We reconstructed a highly resolved dust map, showing the nearest dust clouds at a distance of up to 400 pc with a resolution of 1 pc.
Conclusions.
Our reconstruction provides insights into the structure of the interstellar medium. We compute summary statistics of the spectral index and the 1-point function of the logarithmic dust extinction density, which may constrain simulations of the interstellar medium that achieve a similar resolution.
Aims. Highly resolved maps of the local Galactic dust are an important ingredient for sky emission models. Over almost the whole electromagnetic spectrum one can see imprints of dust, many of which ...originate from dust clouds within 300 pc. Having a detailed 3D reconstruction of these local dust clouds enables detailed studies, helps to quantify the impact on other observables, and is a necessary milestone of larger reconstructions, as every sightline for more distant objects will pass through the local dust. Methods. To infer the dust density we use parallax and extinction estimates published by the Gaia collaboration in their second data release (DR2). We model the dust as a log-normal process using a hierarchical Bayesian model. We also nonparametrically infer the kernel of the log-normal process, which corresponds to the physical spatial correlation power spectrum of the log-density. Results. Using only data from Gaia DR2, we reconstruct the 3D dust density and its spatial correlation spectrum in a 600 pc cube centered on the Sun. We report a spectral index of the logarithmic dust density of 3.1 on Fourier scales with wavelengths between 2 and 125 pc. The resulting 3D dust map as well as the power spectrum and posterior samples are publicly available for download.
We address the inverse problem of cosmic large-scale structure reconstruction from a Bayesian perspective. For a linear data model, a number of known and novel reconstruction schemes, which differ in ...terms of the underlying signal prior, data likelihood and numerical inverse extraregularization schemes are derived and classified. The Bayesian methodology presented in this paper tries to unify and extend the following methods: Wiener filtering, Tikhonov regularization, ridge regression, maximum entropy and inverse regularization techniques. The inverse techniques considered here are the asymptotic regularization, the Jacobi, Steepest Descent, Newton–Raphson, Landweber–Fridman and both linear and non-linear Krylov methods based on Fletcher–Reeves, Polak–Ribière and Hestenes–Stiefel conjugate gradients. The structures of the up-to-date highest performing algorithms are presented, based on an operator scheme, which permits one to exploit the power of fast Fourier transforms. Using such an implementation of the generalized Wiener filter in the novel argo software package, the different numerical schemes are benchmarked with one-, two- and three-dimensional problems including structured white and Poissonian noise, data windowing and blurring effects. A novel numerical Krylov scheme is shown to be superior in terms of performance and fidelity. These fast inverse methods ultimately will enable the application of sampling techniques to explore complex joint posterior distributions. We outline how the space of the dark matter density field, the peculiar velocity field and the power spectrum can jointly be investigated by a Gibbs-sampling process. Such a method can be applied for the redshift distortions correction of the observed galaxies and for time-reversal reconstructions of the initial density field.
We develop a formalism for the identification and accurate estimation of the strength of structure formation shocks during cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. Shocks play a ...decisive role not only for the thermalization of gas in virializing structures but also for the acceleration of relativistic cosmic rays (CRs) through diffusive shock acceleration. Our formalism is applicable both to ordinary non-relativistic thermal gas, and to plasmas composed of CRs and thermal gas. To this end, we derive an analytic solution to the one-dimensional Riemann shock tube problem for a composite plasma of CRs and thermal gas. We apply our methods to study the properties of structure formation shocks in high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of the Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model. We find that most of the energy is dissipated in weak internal shocks with Mach numbers which are predominantly central flow shocks or merger shock waves traversing halo centres. Collapsed cosmological structures are surrounded by external shocks with much higher Mach numbers up to , but they play only a minor role in the energy balance of thermalization. This is because of the higher pre-shock gas densities within non-linear structures, and the significant increase of the mean shock speed as the characteristic halo mass grows with cosmic time. We show that after the epoch of cosmic reionization the Mach number distribution is significantly modified by an efficient suppression of strong external shock waves due to the associated increase of the sound speed of the diffuse gas. Invoking a model for CR acceleration in shock waves, we find that the average strength of shock waves responsible for CR energy injection is higher than that for shocks that dominate the thermalization of the gas. This implies that the dynamical importance of shock-injected CRs is comparatively large in the low-density, peripheral halo infalling regions, but is less important for the weaker flow shocks occurring in central high-density regions of haloes. When combined with radiative dissipation and star formation, our formalism can also be used to study CR injection by supernova shocks, or to construct models for shock-induced star formation in the interstellar medium.
We investigate the interplay of cosmic ray (CR) propagation and advection in galaxy clusters. Propagation in form of CR diffusion and streaming tends to drive the CR radial profiles towards being ...flat, with equal CR number density everywhere. Advection of CR by the turbulent gas motions tends to produce centrally enhanced profiles. We assume that the CR streaming velocity is of the order of the sound velocity. This is motivated by plasma physical arguments. The CR streaming is then usually larger than typical advection velocities and becomes comparable or lower than this only for periods with trans- and super-sonic cluster turbulence. As a consequence a bimodality of the CR spatial distribution results. Strongly turbulent, merging clusters should have a more centrally concentrated CR energy density profile with respect to relaxed ones with very subsonic turbulence. This translates into a bimodality of the expected diffuse radio and gamma-ray emission of clusters, since more centrally concentrated CR will find higher target densities for hadronic CR proton interactions, higher plasma wave energy densities for CR electron and proton re-acceleration, and stronger magnetic fields. Thus, the observed bimodality of cluster radio halos appears to be a natural consequence of the interplay of CR transport processes, independent of the model of radio halo formation, be it hadronic interactions of CR protons or re-acceleration of low-energy CR electrons. Energy dependence of the CR propagation should lead to spectral steepening of dying radio halos. Furthermore, we show that the interplay of CR diffusion with advection implies first order CR re-acceleration in the pressure-stratified atmospheres of galaxy clusters. Finally, we argue that CR streaming could be important in turbulent cool cores of galaxy clusters since it heats preferentially the central gas with highest cooling rate.
ABSTRACT
We determined Faraday rotation measures (RMs) towards 137 pulsars in the northern sky, using Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) observations at 110–190 MHz. This low-frequency RM catalogue, the ...largest to date, improves the precision of existing RM measurements on average by a factor of 20 – due to the low frequency and wide bandwidth of the data, aided by the RM-synthesis method. We report RMs towards 25 pulsars for the first time. The RMs were corrected for ionospheric Faraday rotation to increase the accuracy of our catalogue to ≈0.1 rad m−2. The ionospheric RM correction is currently the largest contributor to the measurement uncertainty. In addition, we find that the Faraday dispersion functions towards pulsars are extremely Faraday thin – mostly less than 0.001 rad m−2. We use these new precise RM measurements (in combination with existing RMs, dispersion measures, and distance estimates) to estimate the scale height of the Galactic halo magnetic field: 2.0 ± 0.3 kpc for Galactic quadrants i and ii above and below the Galactic plane (we also evaluate the scale height for these regions individually). Overall, our initial low-frequency catalogue provides valuable information about the 3D structure of the Galactic magnetic field.
Galactic winds driven by cosmic ray streaming Uhlig, M; Pfrommer, C; Sharma, M ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
July 2012, Volume:
423, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Galactic winds are observed in many spiral galaxies with sizes from dwarfs up to the Milky Way, and they sometimes carry a mass in excess of that of newly formed stars by up to a factor of 10. ...Multiple driving processes of such winds have been proposed, including thermal pressure due to supernova heating, ultraviolet radiation pressure on dust grains or cosmic ray (CR) pressure. We here study wind formation due to CR physics using a numerical model that accounts for CR acceleration by supernovae, CR thermalization by Coulomb and hadronic interactions, and advective CR transport. In addition, we introduce a novel implementation of CR streaming relative to the rest frame of the gas. Streaming CRs excite Alfvén waves on which they scatter, thereby limiting the CRs' effective bulk velocity. We find that CR streaming drives powerful and sustained winds in galaxies with virial masses
. In dwarf galaxies (
) the winds reach a mass loading factor of ∼5, expel ∼60 per cent of the initial baryonic mass contained inside the halo's virial radius and suppress the star formation rate by a factor of ∼5. In dwarfs, the winds are spherically symmetric while in larger galaxies the outflows transition to biconical morphologies that are aligned with the disc's angular momentum axis. We show that damping of Alfvén waves excited by streaming CRs provides a means of heating the outflows to temperatures that scale with the square of the escape speed,
. In larger haloes (
), CR streaming is able to drive fountain flows that excite turbulence, providing another means of heating the halo gas. For halo masses
, we predict an observable level of Hα and X-ray emission from the heated halo gas. We conclude that CR-driven winds should be crucial in suppressing and regulating the first epoch of galaxy formation, expelling a large fraction of baryons, and - by extension - aid in shaping the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function. They should then also be responsible for much of the metal enrichment of the intergalactic medium.
There is growing consensus that feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is the main mechanism responsible for stopping cooling flows in clusters of galaxies. AGN are known to inflate buoyant ...bubbles that supply mechanical power to the intracluster gas intracluster medium (ICM). High Reynolds number hydrodynamical simulations show that such bubbles get entirely disrupted within 100 Myr, as they rise in cluster atmospheres, which is contrary to observations. This artificial mixing has consequences for models trying to quantify the amount of heating and star formation in cool core clusters of galaxies. It has been suggested that magnetic fields can stabilize bubbles against disruption. We perform magnetohydrodynamical simulations of fossil bubbles in the presence of tangled magnetic fields using the high-order pencil code. We focus on the physically motivated case where thermal pressure dominates over magnetic pressure and consider randomly oriented fields with and without maximum helicity and a case where large-scale external fields drape the bubble. We find that helicity has some stabilizing effect. However, unless the coherence length of magnetic fields exceeds the bubble size, the bubbles are quickly shredded. As observations of Hydra A suggest that length-scale of magnetic fields may be smaller than typical bubble size, this may suggest that other mechanisms, such as viscosity, may be responsible for stabilizing the bubbles. However, since Faraday rotation observations of radio lobes do not constrain large-scale ICM fields well if they are aligned with the bubble surface, the draping case may be a viable alternative solution to the problem. A generic feature found in our simulations is the formation of magnetic wakes where fields are ordered and amplified. We suggest that this effect could prevent evaporation by thermal conduction of cold Hα filaments observed in the Perseus cluster.
We performed high-resolution simulations of a sample of 14 galaxy clusters that span a mass range from 5 × 1013 to 2 × 1015 h−1 M⊙ to study the effects of cosmic rays (CRs) on thermal cluster ...observables such as X-ray emission and the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect. We analyse the CR effects on the intra-cluster medium while simultaneously taking into account the cluster's dynamical state as well as the mass of the cluster. The modelling of the CR physics includes adiabatic CR transport processes, injection by supernovae and cosmological structure formation shocks, as well as CR thermalization by the Coulomb interaction and catastrophic losses by hadronic interactions. While the relative pressure contained in CRs within the virial radius is of the order of 2 per cent in our non-radiative simulations, their contribution rises to 32 per cent in our simulations with dissipative gas physics including radiative cooling, star formation and supernova feedback. The relative CR pressure rises towards the outer regions due to a combination of the following effects: CR acceleration is more efficient at the peripheral strong accretion shocks compared to weak central flow shocks, adiabatic compression of a composite of CRs and thermal gas disfavours the CR pressure relative to the thermal pressure due to the softer equation of state of CRs and CR loss processes are more important at the dense centres. Interestingly, in the radiative simulations the relative CR pressure reaches high values of the order of equipartition with the thermal gas in each cluster galaxy due to the fast thermal cooling of gas which diminishes the thermal pressure support relative to that in CRs. This also leads to a lower effective adiabatic index of the composite gas that increases the compressibility of the intra-cluster medium. This effect slightly increases the central density, thermal pressure and the gas fraction. While the X-ray luminosity in low-mass cool core clusters is boosted by up to 40 per cent, the integrated Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect appears to be remarkably robust and the total flux decrement only slightly reduced by typically 2 per cent. The resolved Sunyaev–Zel'dovich maps, however, show a larger variation with an increased central flux decrement.
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