Anisotropic Galactic Outflows and Enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium. II. Numerical Simulations

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to show that anisotropic galactic outflows more effectively enrich the intergalactic medium, especially low-density regions, compared to isotropic outflows, impacting galaxy formation and metal distribution.

Contribution

It introduces a combined analytic and numerical approach to model anisotropic outflows and demonstrates their significant role in IGM enrichment and galaxy formation suppression.

Findings

Anisotropic outflows increase IGM metal filling factor from 8% to 28%.

Outflows preferentially enrich low-density regions (~20%) over high-density (~80%).

More anisotropic outflows lead to more galaxies forming and less overlap of outflows.

Abstract

We combine an analytic model for anisotropic outflows and galaxy formation with numerical simulations of large-scale structure and halo formation to study the impact of galactic outflows on the evolution of the IGM. We have simulated the evolution of a comoving volume (15 Mpc)^3 in the LCDM universe. We follow the formation of 20000-60000 galaxies and simulate the galactic outflows produced by these galaxies, for five outflow opening angles, alpha=60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 degrees (isotropic outflows). Anisotropic outflows follow the path of least resistance and thus travel preferentially into low-density regions, away from cosmological structures where galaxies form. These anisotropic outflows are less likely to overlap with one another, or to hit pre-galactic collapsing halos and strip them of their gas, preventing a galaxy from forming. Going from 180 deg to 60 deg, the number of galaxies that actually form doubles, producing twice as many outflows, and these outflows overlap to a lesser extent. As a result, the metal volume filling factor of the IGM goes from 8% for isotropic outflows up to 28% for anisotropic ones. High density regions are more efficiently enriched than low density ones (~80% compared to ~20% by volume), even though most enriched regions are low densities. Increasing the anisotropy of outflows increases the extent of enrichment at all densities, low and high. This is in part because anisotropic outflows are more numerous. When this effect is factored-out, we find that the probability a galaxy will enrich systems at densities up to 10 rho_mean is higher for increasingly anisotropic outflows. This is an effect of the dynamical evolution of the IGM. Anisotropic outflows expand preferentially into underdense gas, but that gas can later accrete onto overdense structures.