C II radiative cooling of the Galactic diffuse interstellar medium: Insight about the star formation in Damped Lyman-alpha systems

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of using the [C II] 158 micrometer line as a tracer for star formation rates in the Galactic interstellar medium and high-redshift systems, emphasizing the importance of considering both cold and warm gas phases.

Contribution

It demonstrates that accurate star formation rate estimates from [C II] emission require accounting for both cold and warm gas phases, challenging previous assumptions of phase-specific emission.

Findings

C II cooling occurs in both cold and warm phases of the diffuse ISM.

Neglecting either phase leads to inaccurate star formation rate estimates.

Results impact the interpretation of star formation in Damped Lyman-alpha systems.

Abstract

The far-infrared [C II] 158 micrometer fine structure transition is considered to be a dominant coolant in the interstellar medium. For this reason, under the assumption of a thermal steady state, it may be used to infer the heating rate and, in turn, the star formation rate in local, as well as in high redshift systems. In this work, radio and ultraviolet observations of the Galactic interstellar medium are used to understand whether C II is indeed a good tracer of the star formation rate. For a sample of high Galactic latitude sightlines, direct measurements of the temperature indicate the presence of C II in both the cold and the warm phases of the diffuse interstellar gas. The cold gas fraction (~ 10 - 50% of the total neutral gas column density) is not negligible even at high Galactic latitude. It is shown that, to correctly estimate the star formation rate, C II cooling in both the phases should hence be considered. The simple assumption, that the [C II] line originates only from either the cold or the warm phase, significantly underpredicts or overpredicts the star formation rate, respectively. These results are particularly important in the context of the Damped Lyman-alpha systems for which a similar method is often used to estimate the star formation rate. The derived star formation rates in such cases may not be reliable if the temperature of the gas under consideration is not constrained independently.