Entrainment in Trouble: Cool Cloud Acceleration and Destruction in Hot Supernova-Driven Galactic Winds

TL;DR

This paper challenges the idea that hot supernova-driven winds can accelerate cool clouds to observed velocities, suggesting that magnetic fields or alternative mechanisms are needed for high-velocity cool gas outflows.

Contribution

It demonstrates that ram pressure from hot winds cannot account for observed cool cloud velocities, highlighting the need for alternative models or magnetic effects.

Findings

Cool clouds cannot be accelerated to observed velocities by hot winds under standard assumptions.

Magnetic fields may prolong cloud lifetimes, enabling higher velocities.

Cloud shredding timescales must be significantly longer than hydrodynamical predictions.

Abstract

Efficient thermalization of overlapping supernovae within star-forming galaxies may produce a supernova-heated fluid that drives galactic winds. For fiducial assumptions about the timescale for cloud shredding from high-resolution simulations (which neglect magnetic fields) we show that cool clouds with temperature from $T_{c}\sim 10^{2}-10^{4}$ K seen in emission and absorption in galactic winds cannot be accelerated to observed velocities by the ram pressure of a hot wind. Taking into account both the radial structure of the hot flow and gravity, we show that this conclusion holds over a wide range of galaxy, cloud, and hot wind properties. This finding calls into question the prevailing picture whereby the cool atomic gas seen in galactic winds is entrained and accelerated by the hot flow. Given these difficulties with ram pressure acceleration, we discuss alternative models for the origin of high velocity cool gas outflows. Another possibility is that magnetic fields in cool clouds are sufficiently important that they prolong the cloud's life. For $T_{c}=10^{3}$\,K and $10^{4}$\,K clouds, we show that if conductive evaporation can be neglected, the cloud shredding timescale must be $\sim15$ and 5 times longer, respectively, than the values from hydrodynamical simulations in order for cool cloud velocities to reach those seen in observations.