Superbubble blowout dynamics

Abstract

Multiple supernovae and stellar winds from OB associations carve large holes filled with hot gas in the galactic disk. These superbubbles sweep up H I into cold, thin, dense shells and eventually grow large enough to blow completely out of the galactic H I disk. When superbubbles blow out of the disk, they vent hot gas and supernova energy into the galactic corona. In this paper ZEUS, a two-dimensional hydrodynamics code, is used to model the blowout of a superbubble from exponential and Gaussian models for the vertical density stratification. The results are compared to those from the Kompaneets (thin-shell) approximation. It is found that this approximation works very well, and that most of the mass of the shell remains in the plane, with 5 percent of it accelerating upward. The venting of the hot gas and the stability of the shell depends strongly on the model of the density distribution. It is suggested that the low galactic halo actually consists of a froth of merged superbubbles.