Cosmic rays across the star-forming galaxy sequence. II: Stability limits and the onset of cosmic ray-driven outflows

TL;DR

This paper develops a semi-analytic model to determine the conditions under which cosmic rays can drive winds in star-forming galaxies, revealing that CR feedback likely limits star formation efficiency in most galaxies.

Contribution

It introduces a new semi-analytic framework to assess cosmic ray-driven wind stability across galaxy types, incorporating detailed CR transport and losses.

Findings

CRs can drive winds in low surface density galaxies like the Milky Way.

Higher surface density galaxies have CRs unable to launch winds due to hadronic losses.

CR feedback likely sets an upper limit on galaxy star formation efficiency.

Abstract

Cosmic rays (CRs) are a plausible mechanism for launching winds of cool material from the discs of star-forming galaxies. However, there is no consensus on what types of galaxies likely host CR-driven winds, or what role these winds might play in regulating galaxies' star formation rates. Using a detailed treatment of the transport and losses of hadronic CRs developed in the previous paper in this series, here we develop a semi-analytic model that allows us to assess the viability of using CRs to launch cool winds from galactic discs. In particular, we determine the critical CR fluxes -- and corresponding star formation rate surface densities -- above which hydrostatic equilibrium within a given galaxy is precluded because CRs drive the gas off in a wind or otherwise render it unstable. We show that, for star-forming galaxies with lower gas surface densities typical of the Galaxy and local dwarfs, the locus of this CR stability curve patrols the high side of the observed distribution of galaxies in the Kennicutt-Schmidt parameter space of star formation rate versus gas surface density. However, hadronic losses render CRs unable to drive winds in galaxies with higher surface densities. Our results show that quiescent, low surface density galaxies like the Milky Way are poised on the cusp of instability, such that small changes to ISM parameters can lead to the launching of CR-driven outflows, and we suggest that, as a result, CR feedback sets an ultimate limit to the star formation efficiency of most modern galaxies.