ALBERT

Description: We investigate the early impact of single and binary supernova (SN) explosions on dense gas clouds with three-dimensional, high-resolution, hydrodynamic simulations. The effect of cloud structure, radiative cooling and ionizing radiation from the progenitor stars on the net input of kinetic energy, f kin  =  E kin / E SN , thermal energy, f therm  =  E therm / E SN , and gas momentum, f P  =  P / P SN , to the interstellar medium (ISM) is tested. For clouds with $\bar{n} = 100\;{\rm cm}^{-3}$ , the momentum generating Sedov and pressure-driven snowplough phases are terminated early (0.01 Myr) and radiative cooling limits the coupling to f therm  ~ 0.01, f kin  ~ 0.05, and f P  ~ 9, significantly lower than for the case without cooling. For pre-ionized clouds, these numbers are only increased by ~50 per cent, independent of the cloud structure. This only suffices to accelerate ~5 per cent of the cloud to radial velocities 30 km s –1 . A second SN might enhance the coupling efficiencies if delayed past the Sedov phase of the first explosion. Such very low coupling efficiencies cast doubts on many subresolution models for SN feedback, which are, in general, validated a posteriori. Ionizing radiation appears not to significantly enhance the coupling of SNe to the surrounding gas as it drives the ISM into inert dense shells and cold clumps, a process which is unresolved in galaxy-scale simulations. Our results indicate that the momentum input of SNe in ionized, structured clouds is larger (more than a factor of 10) than the corresponding momentum yield of the progenitor's stellar winds.

Description: Supernova (SN) blast waves inject energy and momentum into the interstellar medium (ISM), control its turbulent multiphase structure and the launching of galactic outflows. Accurate modelling of the blast wave evolution is therefore essential for ISM and galaxy formation simulations. We present an efficient method to compute the input of momentum, thermal energy, and the velocity distribution of the shock-accelerated gas for ambient media (densities of 0.1 ≥ n 0 [cm – 3 ] ≥ 100) with uniform (and with stellar wind blown bubbles), power-law, and turbulent (Mach numbers $\mathcal {M}$ from 1to100) density distributions. Assuming solar metallicity cooling, the blast wave evolution is followed to the beginning of the momentum conserving snowplough phase. The model recovers previous results for uniform ambient media. The momentum injection in wind-blown bubbles depend on the swept-up mass and the efficiency of cooling, when the blast wave hits the wind shell. For power-law density distributions with n ( r ) ~  r –2 (for n ( r ) 〉  n floor ) the amount of momentum injection is solely regulated by the background density n floor and compares to n uni = n floor . However, in turbulent ambient media with lognormal density distributions the momentum input can increase by a factor of 2 (compared to the homogeneous case) for high Mach numbers. The average momentum boost can be approximated as $p_{{\rm turb}}/{p_{{0}}}\ =23.07\, \left(\frac{n_{{0,\rm turb}}}{1\,{\rm cm}^{-3}}\right)^{-0.12} + 0.82 (\ln (1+b^{2}\mathcal {M}^{2}))^{1.49}\left(\frac{n_{{0,\rm turb}}}{1\,{\rm cm}^{-3}}\right)^{-1.6}$ . The velocity distributions are broad as gas can be accelerated to high velocities in low-density channels. The model values agree with results from recent, computationally expensive, three-dimensional simulations of SN explosions in turbulent media.

Description: The SILCC project (SImulating the Life-Cycle of molecular Clouds) aims at a more self-consistent understanding of the interstellar medium (ISM) on small scales and its link to galaxy evolution. We present three-dimensional (magneto)hydrodynamic simulations of the ISM in a vertically stratified box including self-gravity, an external potential due to the stellar component of the galactic disc, and stellar feedback in the form of an interstellar radiation field and supernovae (SNe). The cooling of the gas is based on a chemical network that follows the abundances of H + , H, H 2 , C + , and CO and takes shielding into account consistently. We vary the SN feedback by comparing different SN rates, clustering and different positioning, in particular SNe in density peaks and at random positions, which has a major impact on the dynamics. Only for random SN positions the energy is injected in sufficiently low-density environments to reduce energy losses and enhance the effective kinetic coupling of the SNe with the gas. This leads to more realistic velocity dispersions ( $\sigma _\mathrm{H\,{\small {I}}}\approx 0.8\sigma _{300\rm{-}8000\,\mathrm{K}}\sim 10\hbox{-}20\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ , $\sigma _\mathrm{H\,\alpha }\approx 0.6\sigma _{8000-3\times 10^5\,\mathrm{K}}\sim 20\hbox{-}30\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ ), and strong outflows with mass loading factors (ratio of outflow to star formation rate) of up to 10 even for solar neighbourhood conditions. Clustered SNe abet the onset of outflows compared to individual SNe but do not influence the net outflow rate. The outflows do not contain any molecular gas and are mainly composed of atomic hydrogen. The bulk of the outflowing mass is dense ( ~ 10 –25 –10 –24 g cm –3 ) and slow ( v ~ 20–40 km s –1 ) but there is a high-velocity tail of up to v ~ 500 km s –1 with ~ 10 –28 –10 –27 g cm –3 .