Radiation pressure in galactic discs: stability, turbulence, and winds in the single-scattering limit

Abstract

The radiation force on dust grains may be dynamically important in driving turbulence and outflows in rapidly star-forming galaxies. Recent studies focus on the highly optically thick limit relevant to the densest ultraluminous galaxies and super star clusters, where reprocessed infrared photons provide the dominant source of electromagnetic momentum. However, even among starburst galaxies, the great majority instead lie in the so-called ‘single-scattering’ limit, where the system is optically thick to the incident starlight, but optically thin to the reradiated infrared. In this paper, we present a stability analysis and multidimensional radiation–hydrodynamic simulations exploring the stability and dynamics of isothermal dusty gas columns in this regime. We describe our algorithm for full angle-dependent radiation transport based on the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method. For a range of near-Eddington fluxes, we show that the medium is unstable, producing convective-like motions in a turbulent atmosphere with a scale height significantly inflated compared to the gas pressure scale height and mass-weighted turbulent energy densities of ∼0.01–0.1 of the mid-plane radiation energy density, corresponding to mass-weighted velocity dispersions of Mach number ∼0.5–2. Extrapolation of our results to optical depths of 103 implies maximum turbulent Mach numbers of ∼20. Comparing our results to galaxy-averaged observations, and subject to the approximations of our calculations, we find that radiation pressure does not contribute significantly to the effective supersonic pressure support in star-forming discs, which in general are substantially sub-Eddington. We further examine the time-averaged vertical density profiles in dynamical equilibrium and comment on implications for radiation-pressure-driven galactic winds. Show more