Engineering topics

Escala, Andres

Publications and source records attributed to Escala, Andres.

4 records

DOE OSTI2016

A PORTRAIT OF COLD GAS IN GALAXIES AT 60 pc RESOLUTION AND A SIMPLE METHOD TO TEST HYPOTHESES THAT LINK SMALL-SCALE ISM STRUCTURE TO GALAXY-SCALE PROCESSES

The cloud-scale density, velocity dispersion, and gravitational boundedness of the interstellar medium (ISM) vary within and among galaxies. In turbulent models, these properties play key roles in the ability of gas to form stars. New high-fidelity, high-resolution surveys offer the prospect to measure these quantities across galaxies. We present a simple approach to make such measurements and to test hypotheses that link small-scale gas structure to star formation and galactic environment. Our calculations capture the key physics of the Larson scaling relations, and we show good correspondence between our approach and a traditional “cloud properties” treatment. However, we argue that our method is preferable in many cases because of its simple, reproducible characterization of all emission. Using, low- J {sup 12}CO data from recent surveys, we characterize the molecular ISM at 60 pc resolution in the Antennae, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), M31, M33, M51, and M74. We report the distributions of surface density, velocity dispersion, and gravitational boundedness at 60 pc scales and show galaxy-to-galaxy and intragalaxy variations in each. The distribution of flux as a function of surface density appears roughly lognormal with a 1 σ width of ∼0.3 dex, though the center of this distribution varies from galaxy to galaxy. The 60 pc resolution line width and molecular gas surface density correlate well, which is a fundamental behavior expected for virialized or free-falling gas. Varying the measurement scale for the LMC and M31, we show that the molecular ISM has higher surface densities, lower line widths, and more self-gravity at smaller scales.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2013

THE IMPACT OF BOUND STELLAR ORBITS AND GENERAL RELATIVITY ON THE TEMPORAL BEHAVIOR OF TIDAL DISRUPTION FLARES

We have carried out general relativistic particle simulations of stars tidally disrupted by massive black holes. When a star is disrupted in a bound orbit with moderate eccentricity instead of a parabolic orbit, the temporal behavior of the resulting stellar debris changes qualitatively. The debris is initially all bound, returning to pericenter in a short time about the original stellar orbital timescale. The resulting fallback rate can thus be much higher than the Eddington rate. Furthermore, if the star is disrupted close to the hole, in a regime where general relativity is important, the stellar and debris orbits display general relativistic precession. Apsidal precession can make the debris stream cross itself after several orbits, likely leading to fast debris energy dissipation. If the star is disrupted in an inclined orbit around a spinning hole, nodal precession reduces the probability of self-intersection, and circularization may take many dynamical timescales, delaying the onset of flare activity. An examination of the particle dynamics suggests that quasi-periodic flares with short durations, produced when the center of the tidal stream passes pericenter, may occur in the early-time light curve. The late-time light curve may still show power-law behavior which is generic to disk accretion processes. The detection triggers for future surveys should be extended to capture such 'non-standard' short-term flaring activity before the event enters the asymptotic decay phase, as this activity is likely to be more sensitive to physical parameters such as the black hole spin.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2013

GRAVITATIONAL FRAGMENTATION IN GALAXY MERGERS: A STABILITY CRITERION

We study the gravitational stability of gaseous streams in the complex environment of a galaxy merger, because mergers are known to be places of ongoing massive cluster formation and bursts of star formation. We find an analytic stability parameter for the case of gaseous streams orbiting around the merger remnant. We test our stability criterion using hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy mergers and obtain satisfactory results. We find that our criterion successfully predicts the streams that will be gravitationally unstable to fragmentation into clumps.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

BINARY-DISK INTERACTION: GAP-OPENING CRITERIA

We study the interaction of an equal mass binary with an isothermal circumbinary disk motivated by the evidence of the formation of massive black hole binaries surrounded by gas, after a major merger of gas-rich galaxies. We focus on the torques that the binary produces on the disk and how the exchange of angular momentum can drive the gap formation on it. We propose that the angular momentum exchange between the binary and the disk is through the gravitational interaction of the binary and a (tidally formed) global non-axisymmetric perturbation in the disk. Using this interaction, we derive an analytic criterion for the gap formation in the disk that can be expressed either via the characteristic velocities of the binary-disk system or in terms of the structural parameters h/a and M(< r)/M{sub bin}. Using numerical simulations we show that the simulations where the binary opens a gap in the disk and the simulations where the disk does not have a gap are distributed into two well separated regions. Our analytic criterion predicts a shape of the threshold between these two regions that is consistent with our simulations and the other ones in the literature. We propose an analogy between the regime without (with) a gap in the disk and the Type I (Type II) migration that is observed in simulations of planet-disk interaction (extreme mass ratio binary), emphasizing that the interaction that drives the formation of a gap on the disk is different in the regime that we analyze (comparable mass binary).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗