Design and scaling of an Omega-EP experiment to study cold streams feeding early galaxies
ORAL
Abstract
Galaxies form in dark matter halos. Massive galaxies forming around redshifts of z=1 are believed to grow by "hot" accretion: gas accretes semi-spherically, establishing a shock that heats up infalling gas, which then slowly cools and shrinks to the disc. Smaller, younger galaxies forming at z=2-4 are believed to be fed by cold streams: cold, dense gas delivered straight to the disc by highly collimated filamentary flows. However, the most prolific star forming galaxies in the universe are young but massive, with cold, dense filaments penetrating its hot, diffuse halo.
Such a flow is likely Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) unstable. Significant KH evolution as well as collapse of the filament by a shock-heated background may disrupt the cold stream and mark the transition from cold to hot accretion. We present here our design and scaling of an Omega EP laser experiment to study this process in the lab.
*This work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, through the NNSA-DS and SC-OFES Joint Program in High-Energy-Density Laboratory Plasmas, grant number DE-NA0002956, and the National Laser User Facility Program, grant number DE-NA0002719, and through the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester by the NNSA/OICF under Cooperative Agreement No. DE-NA0001944.
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Presenters
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Shane Coffing
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109