Starburst Galaxies — an Observer’s View

  • Michael Dahlem
Chapter

Abstract

Starbursts are the most efficient producers of metals in the Universe at low redshifts. They produce enough energy to drive outflows of material from their disks. This makes them important objects to study in order to understand the chemical evolution not only of the interstellar medium (ISM) in the starburst galaxies themselves, but also of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in their vicinity. However, several key quantities of starbursts that are needed as input to models of their ISM are still ill-constrained. Some of these critical parameters are e.g. the metal abundances of hot ionized gas, the ionization state of warm ionized gas, the amount of energy deposited into the ambient by a starburst, the efficiency of its conversion into mechanical energy and thus the total kinetic energy of the star formation-driven outflows and their kinematics. The latter are important when considering under which circumstances matter energized by a starburst will reach the so-called ‘blowout’ condition, i.e. supersede the threshold energy starting at which local energy injection into the ISM can drive an outflow first into the halo (where metal re-distribution might be very efficient) and eventually out into intergalactic space. I will discuss here a few of these quantities, how we can measure them better than in the past, and in which way some of our observing techniques need to be improved in order to obtain better constraints from the data.

Keywords

Galaxies starbursts interstellar medium disk-halo interactions intergalactic medium 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Breitschwerdt, D., McKenzie, J.F. and Völk, HJ.: 1991, A&A 245, 79.ADSGoogle Scholar
  2. Breitschwerdt, D., McKenzie, J.F. and Volk, H.J.: 1993, A&A 269, 54.ADSGoogle Scholar
  3. Breitschwerdt, D. and Schmutzler, T.: 1994, Nature 371, 774.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Carilli, C.L., Holdaway, M.A., Ho, P.T.P. and De Pree, CG.: 1992, ApJ 399, L59.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Chevalier, R.A.: 1974, ApJ 188, 501.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Combes, F.: 1987, in: R. Pudritz and M. Fich (eds.), Proceedings NATO Conference on Galactic and Extragalactic Star Formation, Reidel, Dordrecht Boston.Google Scholar
  7. Cox, D.P. and Smith, B.W.: 1976, ApJ 203, 361.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Dahlem, M.: 1997, PASP 109, 1298.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Dahlem, M., Lazendic, J.S., Haynes, R.F., Ehle, M. and Lisenfeld, U.: 2001, A&A 374, 42.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. Dahlem, M., Lisenfeld, U. and Golla, G.: 1995, ApJ 444, 119.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Dahlem, M., Parmar, A., Oosterbroek, T. et al.: 2000, ApJ 538, 555.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Dahlem, M., Petr, M.G., Lehnert, M.D. et al.: 1997, A&A 320, 731.ADSGoogle Scholar
  13. Dettmar, R.-J.: 1992, Fund. Cosm. Physics 15, 143.ADSGoogle Scholar
  14. Domgörgen, H. and Dettmar, R. J.: 1997, A&A 322, 391.ADSGoogle Scholar
  15. Domgörgen, H. and Mathis, J.S.: 1994, ApJ 428, 647.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Field, G.B., Goldsmith, D.W. and Habing, HJ.: 1969, ApJ 155, L49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Gonzalez Delgado, R.M.: 2002, in: Perez, González Delgado and Tenorio-Tagle (eds.), Star Formation through Time, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ASP Conference Proceedings, San Francisco, (in press).Google Scholar
  18. Habe, A. and Ikeuchi, S.: 1980, Prog. Theor. Physics 64, 1995.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Heckman, T.M.: 2001, in: J.E. Hibbard, M. Rupen and J.H. van Gorkom (eds.), Gas and Galaxy Evolution, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, ASP Conference Proceedings 240, San Francisco, p. 345.Google Scholar
  20. Heckman, T.M., Armus, L. and Miley, G.K.: 1990, ApJS 74, 833.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Heckman, T.M., Lehnert, M.D., Strickland, D.K. and Armus, L.: 2000, ApJS 129, 493.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Ikeuchi, S.: 1988, Fund. Cosm. Physics 12, 255.ADSGoogle Scholar
  23. Irwin, J.A. and Sofue, Y.: 1996, ApJ 464, 738.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Kobulnicky, H.A.: 1999, in: K.A. van der Hucht, G. Koenigsverger and P.R.J. Eenens (eds.), Proceedings of the 193rd Symposium of the International Astronomical Union, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco, p. 670.Google Scholar
  25. Lesch, H., Biermann, PL., Crusius, A. et al.: 1990, MNRAS 242, 149.ADSGoogle Scholar
  26. Malhotra, S., Kaufman, M.J., Hollenbach, D. et al.: ApJ, in press (astro-ph/0106485).Google Scholar
  27. Martin, C.L., Kobulnicky, H.A. and Heckman, T.M.: ApJ 574, 663.Google Scholar
  28. McKee, C.F. and Ostriker, J.P: 1977, ApJ 218, 148.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Meurer, G.R., Heckman, T.M., Lehnert, M.D. et al.: 1997, AJ 114, 54.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Mouhcine, M. and Contini, T.: 2002, A&A 389, 106.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Norman, CA. and Ferrara, A.: 1996, ApJ 467, 291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Persic, M. and Rephaeli, Y: 2002, A&A, in press, (astro-ph/0112030).Google Scholar
  33. Pietsch, W.: 1993, in: G. Hensler et al. (eds.), Panchromatic View of Galaxies — Their Evolutionary Puzzle, Éditions Frontières, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, p. 137.Google Scholar
  34. Rand, R.J.: 2000, ApJ 535, 663.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Rosen, A. and Bregman, J.N.: 1995, ApJ 440, 634.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Schulz, H. and Wegner, G.: 1992, A&A 266, 167.ADSGoogle Scholar
  37. Shapiro, P.R. and Field, G.B.: 1976, ApJ 205, 762.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Tomisaka, K. and Ikeuchi, S.: 1986, PASJ 38, 697.ADSGoogle Scholar
  39. Walter, F., Weiss, A. and Scoville, N.: 2002, ApJ 580, L21.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Weiss, A., Walter, F., Neininger, N. and Klein, U.: 1999, A&A 345, L23. 1999.ADSGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Michael Dahlem
    • 1
  1. 1.European Southern ObservatoryCasillaChile

Personalised recommendations