Outflows and complex stellar kinematics in SDSS star forming galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses a large SDSS galaxy sample to analyze star formation-driven outflows by comparing ionized gas and stellar kinematics, revealing outflow incidence increases with star formation rate and galaxy position relative to the main sequence.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method comparing gas and stellar line-of-sight velocity distributions to detect faint outflow signatures in a large galaxy sample.

Findings

Outflow incidence increases with SFR and sSFR.

Outflow velocity correlates with SFR and stellar velocity dispersion.

Outflows are predominantly detected in galaxies above the main sequence.

Abstract

We investigate the properties of star formation-driven outflows by using a large spectroscopic sample of ~160,000 local "normal" star forming galaxies, drawn from the SDSS, spanning a wide range of star formation rates and stellar masses. The galaxy sample is divided into a fine grid of bins in the M_*-SFR parameter space, for each of which we produce a composite spectrum by stacking together the SDSS spectra of the galaxies contained in that bin. We exploit the high signal-to-noise of the stacked spectra to study the emergence of faint features of optical emission lines that may trace galactic outflows and would otherwise be too faint to detect in individual galaxy spectra. We adopt a novel approach that relies on the comparison between the line-of-sight velocity distribution (LoSVD) of the ionised gas (as traced by the [OIII]5007 and Halpha+[NII]6548,6583 emission lines) and the LoSVD of the stars, which are used as a reference tracing virial motions. Significant deviations of the gas kinematics from the stellar kinematics in the high velocity tail of the LoSVDs are interpreted as a signature of outflows. Our results suggest that the incidence of ionised outflows increases with SFR and sSFR. The outflow velocity (v_out) correlates tightly with the SFR for SFR>1 M_Sun/yr, whereas at lower SFRs the dependence of v_out on SFR is nearly flat. The outflow velocity, although with a much larger scatter, increases also with the stellar velocity dispersion, and we infer velocities as high as v_out~(6-8)*sigma_stars. Strikingly, we detect the signature of ionised outflows only in galaxies located above the main sequence (MS) of star forming galaxies in the M_*-SFR diagram, and the incidence of such outflows increases sharply with the offset from the MS. Our complementary analysis of the stellar kinematics reveals the presence of blue asymmetries of a few 10 km/s in the stellar LoSVDs. [abridged]