How do galactic winds affect the Lyalpha forest?

We investigate the effect of galactic winds on the Lyalpha forest in cosmological simulations of structure and galaxy formation. We combine high resolution N-body simulations of the evolution of the dark matter with a semi-analytic model for the formation and evolution of galaxies which includes detailed prescriptions for the long-term evolution of galactic winds. This model is the first to describe the evolution of outflows as a two-phase process (an adiabatic bubble followed by a momentum--driven shell) and to include metal--dependent cooling of the outflowing material. We find that the main statistical properties of the Lyalpha forest, namely the flux power spectrum P(k) and the flux probability distribution function (PDF), are not significantly affected by winds and so do not significantly constrain wind models. Winds around galaxies do, however, produce detectable signatures in the forest, in particular, increased flux transmissivity inside hot bubbles, and narrow, saturated absorption lines caused by dense cooled shells. We find that the Lyalpha flux transmissivity is highly enhanced near strongly wind-blowing galaxies, almost half of all high-redshift galaxies in our sample, in agreement with the results of Adelberger et al. (2005). Finally, we propose a new method to identify absorption lines potentially due to wind shells in the Lyalpha forest: we calculate the abundance of saturated regions in spectra as a function of region width and we find that the number with widths smaller than about 1 Angstrom at z=3 and 0.6 Angstrom at z=2 may be more than doubled. This should be detectable in real spectra.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures. Minor changes in the text. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Magnetic Field Seeding by Galactic Winds

The origin of intergalactic magnetic fields is still a mystery and several scenarios have been proposed so far: among them, primordial phase transitions, structure formation shocks and galactic outflows. In this work we investigate how efficiently galactic winds can provide an intense and widespread "seed" magnetisation. This may be used to explain the magnetic fields observed today in clusters of galaxies and in the intergalactic medium (IGM). We use semi-analytic simulations of magnetised galactic winds coupled to high resolution N-body simulations of structure formation to estimate lower and upper limits for the fraction of the IGM which can be magnetised up to a specified level. We find that galactic winds are able to seed a substantial fraction of the cosmic volume with magnetic fields. Most regions affected by winds have magnetic fields in the range -12 < Log B < -8 G, while higher seed fields can be obtained only rarely and in close proximity to wind-blowing galaxies. These seed fields are sufficiently intense for a moderately efficient turbulent dynamo to amplify them to the observed values. The volume filling factor of the magnetised regions strongly depends on the efficiency of winds to load mass from the ambient medium. However, winds never completely fill the whole Universe and pristine gas can be found in cosmic voids and regions unaffected by feedback even at z=0. This means that, in principle, there might be the possibility to probe the existence of primordial magnetic fields in such regions.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publications by MNRAS. A high resolution version of the paper is available at http://astronomy.sussex.ac.uk/~sb207/Papers/bb.ps.g

Radiative Transfer and Radiative driving of Outflows in AGN and Starbursts

To facilitate the study of black hole fueling, star formation, and feedback in galaxies, we outline a method for treating the radial forces on interstellar gas due to absorption of photons by dust grains. The method gives the correct behavior in all of the relevant limits (dominated by the central point source; dominated by the distributed isotropic source; optically thin; optically thick to UV/optical; optically thick to IR) and reasonably interpolates between the limits when necessary. The method is explicitly energy conserving so that UV/optical photons that are absorbed are not lost, but are rather redistributed to the IR where they may scatter out of the galaxy. We implement the radiative transfer algorithm in a two-dimensional hydrodynamical code designed to study feedback processes in the context of early-type galaxies. We find that the dynamics and final state of simulations are measurably but only moderately affected by radiative forces on dust, even when assumptions about the dust-to-gas ratio are varied from zero to a value appropriate for the Milky Way. In simulations with high gas densities designed to mimic ULIRGs with a star formation rate of several hundred solar masses per year, dust makes a more substantial contribution to the dynamics and outcome of the simulation. We find that, despite the large opacity of dust to UV radiation, the momentum input to the flow from radiation very rarely exceeds L/c due to two factors: the low opacity of dust to the re-radiated IR and the tendency for dust to be destroyed by sputtering in hot gas environments. We also develop a simplification of our radiative transfer algorithm that respects the essential physics but is much easier to implement and requires a fraction of the computational cost.Comment: 25 pages, 17 figures, submitted to MNRA

The Effect of the AGN Feedback on the Interstellar Medium of Early-Type Galaxies: 2D Hydrodynamical Simulations of the Low-Rotation Case

We present 2D hydrodynamical simulations for the evolution of early-type galaxies containing central massive black holes (MBHs), starting at age 2 Gyr. The code contains accurate and physically consistent radiative and mechanical AGN wind feedback, with parsec-scale central resolution. Mass input comes from stellar evolution; energy input includes Type Ia and II supernova and stellar heating; star-formation is included. Realistic, axisymmetric dynamical models for the galaxies are built solving the Jeans' equations. The lowest mass models (Mstar = 8 10^{10}Msun) develop global outflows sustained by SNIa's heating, ending with a significantly lower amount of hot gas and new stars. In more massive models, nuclear outbursts last to the present epoch, with large and frequent fluctuations in nuclear emission and from the gas (Lx). Each burst last ~ 10^{7.5} yr, during which (for r < 2-3 kpc) cold, inflowing, and hot, outflowing gas phases coexist. The Lx-T relation for the gas matches that of local galaxies. AGN activity causes positive feedback for star formation. Roughly half of the total mass loss is recycled into new stars (DeltaMstar), just ~ 3% of it is accreted on the MBH, the remainder being ejected from the galaxy. The ratio between the mass of gas expelled to that in to new stars, the load factor, is ~0.6. Rounder galaxies shapes lead to larger final MBH masses, DeltaMstar, and Lx. Almost all the time is spent at very low nuclear luminosities, yet one quarter of the total energy is emitted at an Eddington ratio > 0.1. The duty-cycle of AGN activity approximates 4% (Abridged).Comment: 26 pages, 15 figure, submitted to ApJ. Comments welcom

Evidence of widespread degradation of gene control regions in hominid genomes

Although sequences containing regulatory elements located close to protein-coding genes are often only weakly conserved during evolution, comparisons of rodent genomes have implied that these sequences are subject to some selective constraints. Evolutionary conservation is particularly apparent upstream of coding sequences and in first introns, regions that are enriched for regulatory elements. By comparing the human and chimpanzee genomes, we show here that there is almost no evidence for conservation in these regions in hominids. Furthermore, we show that gene expression is diverging more rapidly in hominids than in murids per unit of neutral sequence divergence. By combining data on polymorphism levels in human noncoding DNA and the corresponding human¿chimpanzee divergence, we show that the proportion of adaptive substitutions in these regions in hominids is very low. It therefore seems likely that the lack of conservation and increased rate of gene expression divergence are caused by a reduction in the effectiveness of natural selection against deleterious mutations because of the low effective population sizes of hominids. This has resulted in the accumulation of a large number of deleterious mutations in sequences containing gene control elements and hence a widespread degradation of the genome during the evolution of humans and chimpanzees

AGN feedback in an isolated elliptical galaxy: the effect of strong radiative feedback in the kinetic mode

Based on two-dimensional high resolution hydrodynamic numerical simulation, we study the mechanical and radiative feedback effects from the central AGN on the cosmological evolution of an isolated elliptical galaxy. Physical processes such as star formation and supernovae are considered. The inner boundary of the simulation domain is carefully chosen so that the fiducial Bondi radius is resolved and the accretion rate of the black hole is determined self-consistently. In analogy to previous works, we assume that the specific angular momentum of the galaxy is low. It is well-known that when the accretion rates are high and low, the central AGNs will be in cold and hot accretion modes, which correspond to the radiative and kinetic feedback modes, respectively. The emitted spectrum from the hot accretion flows is harder than that from the cold accretion flows, which could result in a higher Compton temperature accompanied by a more efficient radiative heating, according to previous theoretical works. Such a difference of the Compton temperature between the two feedback modes, the focus of this study, has been neglected in previous works. Significant differences in the kinetic feedback mode are found as a result of the stronger Compton heating and accretion becomes more chaotic. More importantly, if we constrain models to correctly predict black hole growth and AGN duty cycle after cosmological evolution, we find that the favored model parameters are constrained: mechanical feedback efficiency diminishes with decreasing luminosity (the maximum efficiency being $\simeq 10^{-3.5}$) and X-ray Compton temperature increases with decreasing luminosity, although models with fixed mechanical efficiency and Compton temperature can be found that are satisfactory as well. We conclude that radiative feedback in the kinetic mode is much more important than previously thought.Comment: 35 pages, 7 figures, accepted by the Ap

The Role of Black Hole Feedback on Size and Structural Evolution in Massive Galaxies

We use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to investigate the role of feedback from accreting black holes on the evolution of sizes, compactness, stellar core density and specific star-formation of massive galaxies with stellar masses of $M_{star} > 10^{10.9} M_{\odot}$. We perform two sets of cosmological zoom-in simulations of 30 halos to z=0: (1) without black holes and Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) feedback and (2) with AGN feedback arising from winds and X-ray radiation. We find that AGN feedback can alter the stellar density distribution, reduce the core density within the central 1 kpc by 0.3 dex from z=1, and enhance the size growth of massive galaxies. We also find that galaxies simulated with AGN feedback evolve along similar tracks to those characterized by observations in specific star formation versus compactness. We confirm that AGN feedback plays an important role in transforming galaxies from blue compact galaxies into red extended galaxies in two ways: (1) it effectively quenches the star formation, transforming blue compact galaxies into compact quiescent galaxies and (2) it also removes and prevents new accretion of cold gas, shutting down in-situ star formation and causing subsequent mergers to be gas-poor or mixed. Gas poor minor mergers then build up an extended stellar envelope. AGN feedback also puffs up the central region through the fast AGN driven winds as well as the slow expulsion of gas while the black hole is quiescent. Without AGN feedback, large amounts of gas accumulate in the central region, triggering star formation and leading to overly massive blue galaxies with dense stellar cores.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap