John Everett (UW Madison)

Driving Ionized Galactic-Scale Winds: Gas & Cosmic-Ray Pressure, Magnetic Fields, and Rotation

We have developed the first general-purpose, semi-analytical model of highly ionized winds from galactic disks: these models can be used to calculate mass- and angular-momentum-loss rates for generic galaxies, and can help build intuition about how those flows change with variations in galactic conditions. We have also developed radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray predictions for these wind models. In this talk, I will briefly outline the model and its assumptions, and then summarize our results of how mass-loss rates depend on parameters such as gas pressure, cosmic-ray pressure, gas density, magnetic-field strength, and galactic rotation. I will show how this model applies to our own Milky Way, and also connect it to starburst galaxies NGC 253 and M 82. Future work on this model will examine how the hot, ionized wind interacts with embedded, cool clouds observed in the optical.