Paper detail

How runaway stars boost galactic outflows

Roughly ten per cent of OB stars are kicked out of their natal clusters before ending their life as supernovae. These so-called runaway stars can travel hundreds of parsecs into the low-density interstellar medium, where momentum and energy from stellar feedback is efficiently deposited. In this work we explore how this mechanism affects large scale properties of the galaxy, such as outflows. To do so we use a new model which treats OB stars and their associated feedback processes on a star-by-star basis. With this model we compare two hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies, one where we include runaways, and one where we ignore them. Including runaway stars leads to twice as many supernovae explosions in regions with gas densities ranging from 1e-5 cm^-3 to 1e-3 cm^-3. This results in more efficient heating of the inter-arm regions, and drives strong galactic winds with mass loading factors boosted by up to one order of magnitude. These outflows produce a more massive and extended multi-phase circumgalactic medium, as well as a population of dense clouds in the halo. Conversely, since less energy and momentum is released in the dense star forming regions, the cold phase of the interstellar medium is less disturbed by feedback effects.