Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, John Moustakas, Christy A. Tremonti, Alison L. Coil, Ryan C. Hickox, Aday R. Robaina, Gregory H. Rudnick, & Paul H. Sell
Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, John Moustakas, Christy A. Tremonti, Alison L. Coil, Ryan C. Hickox, Aday R. Robaina, Gregory H. Rudnick, & Paul H. Sell
ABSTRACT
We present the discovery of compact, obscured star formation in galaxies at z 0.6 that exhibit
& 1000 km s1 outflows. Using optical morphologies from the Hubble Space Telescope and infrared
photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, we estimate star formation rate (SFR)
surface densities that approach SFR 3000 M yr1 kpc2 , comparable to the Eddington limit from
radiation pressure on dust grains. We argue that feedback associated with a compact starburst in the
form of radiation pressure from massive stars and ram pressure from supernovae and stellar winds is
sufficient to produce the high-velocity outflows we observe, without the need to invoke feedback from
an active galactic nucleus.
Subject headings: galaxies: evolution galaxies: kinematics and dynamics galaxies: ISM
galaxies: starburst
1. INTRODUCTION
Diamond-Stanic et al.
http://stsdas.stsci.edu/multidrizzle/
have shown that the shape of the IR SED for starforming galaxies depends on SFR (Rujopakarn et al.
2011; Elbaz et al. 2011), with more compact starbursts
having larger total-IR (81000 m) to mid-IR (824 m)
ratios, characteristic of the most luminous galaxies in the
local universe (Rieke et al. 2009). If we used the most luminous local templates for the 8/25 sources with SFRs
in the ULIRG regime (SFRIR > 100 M yr1 ), we would
obtain SFRs that are larger by 0.5 dex than the values
we adopt for this paper.
We also estimate SFRs and stellar masses based on
stellar population fits to the rest = 0.13 m SEDs using the method of Moustakas et al. (2011). For the 14/25
galaxies with SFRIR > 50 M yr1 , there is agreement
between these UV-based SFR estimates and SFRIR with
a scatter of 0.32 dex. For an SMC dust law, we find a median attenuation of AV = 0.4 mag. The observed H luminosities, uncorrected for dust extinction, are typically
factors of 1020 smaller than expected from the UV and
IR SFRs. This can be reconciled by either strong differential dust attenuation (i.e., AV 23 mag for the lineemitting region), escaping ionizing photons from matterbounded H ii regions, or a recently quenched starburst
(t > 5 Myr) with a small ratio of ionizing ( < 912
A)
to non-ionizing UV photons.
2.3. Outflow Kinematics and Covering Factors
We present rest = 25005200
A spectroscopy for
three high-SFR sources in Figure 3 based on data
from MMT/Blue Channel and SDSS (J1506+5402),
Magellan/MagE (J1341-0321), and Keck/LRIS and
3. DISCUSSION
The compact sizes (re 100 pc) and large SFRs
(SFR 200 M ) for the three galaxies described above
imply extremely large SFR surface densities (SFR
3000 M yr1 kpc2 ). To place these galaxies in context, we plot SFR versus stellar mass for the 25/29
galaxies detected by WISE in Figure 4. We include comparison samples of 105 star-forming galaxies at 0.5 <
z < 1.5 from Wuyts et al. (2011) and gas-rich mergers
at z < 0.3 including 32 ULIRGs from Veilleux et al.
(2006), five Lyman break analogs with dominant central
objects from Overzier et al. (2009), and the local compact starburst Arp 220 (Scoville et al. 1997; Kennicutt
1998; Rodrguez Zaurn et al. 2008). We also mark
the empirical threshold for launching winds (SFR
0.1 M yr1 kpc2 , Heckman 2002), the 90th percentile
limit for the surface brightness of starbursts over a wide
range in redshift measured using UV, H, far-IR, and radio continuum emission (SFR 25 M yr1 kpc2 for
a Chabrier IMF, Meurer et al. 1997), and the theoretical
limit for a starburst limited by feedback from radiation
pressure (SFR 3000 M yr1 kpc2 , Murray et al.
2005; Thompson et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2010). The
most luminous, compact starbursts in our sample exhibit
SFR surface densities that reach the Eddington limit,
suggesting that their growth is being regulated by momentum input from massive stars.
Diamond-Stanic et al.
Fig. 4. SFR surface densities and stellar masses for the HSTWISE sample described in this paper (black circles, symbol size proportional
to outflow velocity), along with samples of z < 0.3 gas-rich mergers (orange squares) and z 1 star-forming galaxies (shown with 68%,
95%, and 99.7% contours; see Section 3). We mark the empirical threshold for launching winds (dotted line, SFR 0.1 M yr1 kpc2 ;
Heckman 2002), the 90th-percentile starburst intensity limit from Meurer et al. (1997) (dashed line, SFR 25 M yr1 kpc2 ), and the
Eddington limit from radiation pressure on dust grains (solid line, SFR 3000 M yr1 kpc2 ; Murray et al. 2005; Thompson et al.
2005; Hopkins et al. 2010). The representative error bar in the top-right portion of the plot corresponds to uncertainties of 0.3 dex in SFR
and 0.2 dex in stellar mass. Our HSTWISE sample overlaps with the region characterized by gas-rich mergers, and extends to very large
SFR surface densities near the Eddington limit, suggesting growth that is limited by momentum injection from massive stars.
p
2GM /r
1/2
1/2
M
r
km s1 (1)
= 2100
1011 M
200 pc
vesc =
We acknowledge useful discussions with and assistance from James Aird, Brandon Kelly, Dusan Keres,
David Law, Alexander Mendez, Kate Rubin, Art Wolfe,
and Stijn Wuyts. AMD acknowledges support from
the Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution, a
multi-campus research program funded by the University of California Office of Research. Support for HSTGO-12272 was provided by NASA through a grant from
STScI. Support for Spitzer-GO-60145 was provided by
contract 1419615 from JPL/Caltech. This paper includes
data obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory.
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