The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect due to hyper-starburst galaxy winds

TL;DR

This paper models the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect caused by hyper-starburst galaxy winds using a spherical blastwave approach, predicting observable signals and assessing cooling effects to guide future detections.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified spherical blastwave model for hyper-starburst galaxy winds and predicts their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signatures for observational testing.

Findings

Bremsstrahlung cooling limits adiabatic expansion to 10^7-10^8 years.

The model predicts detectable SZ signals with ALMA for hyper-starburst galaxies.

Cooling effects significantly influence the evolution of galaxy wind bubbles.

Abstract

We construct a simple, spherical blastwave model to estimate the pressure structure of the intergalactic medium surrounding hyper-starburst galaxies, and argue that the effects of interaction with star-forming galaxy winds may be approximated at early times by an adiabatically expanding, self-similar `bubble' as described by Weaver et al. (1977) and Ostriker & McKee (1988). This model is used to make observational predictions for the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in the shocked bubble plasma. Radiative cooling losses are explored, and it is found that bremsstrahlung will limit the epoch of adiabatic expansion to $10^7$--$10^8$ years: comparable to total hyper-starburst lifetimes. Prospects for making a first Sunyaev-Zel'dovich detection of galaxy wind bubbles using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array are examined for a number of active hyper-starburst sources in the literature.