Density Bounding in the H II Regions of Galactic Disks: Evidence and Consequences

Beckman, J. E.; Zurita, A.; Rozas, M.; Cardwell, A.; Relaño, M.
Bibliographical reference

Ionized Gaseous Nebulae, a Conference to Celebrate the 60th Birthdays of Silvia Torres-Peimbert and Manuel Peimbert, Mexico City, November 21-24, 2000 (Eds. W. J. Henney, J. Franco, M. Martos, & M. Peña) Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias) Vol. 12, pp. 213-218 (2002) (http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~rmaa/)

Advertised on:
2
2002
Number of authors
5
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
3
Refereed citations
1
Description
We present four lines of evidence leading to the conclusion that a notable fraction of the ionizing photon emission from the stars within H II regions in the disks of normal galaxies escapes from the regions into the surrounding galaxy and beyond. These are: (1) The surface brightness intensity distribution of the diffuse ensuremath {{Hα }} emitted by a disk galaxy is well modeled by assuming that the Lyman continuum producing it leaks from the H II regions. (2) The relation of the central ensuremath {{Hα }} surface brightness to total luminosity of an H II region departs from the predictions of uniform ionization bounded systems. (3) The ensuremath {{Hα }} luminosity function of complete H II region populations shows a break whose parameters are explicable using the density bounding hypothesis, but not via competing hypotheses. (4) The relation between the ensuremath {{Hα }} internal velocity half-width and luminosity for H II regions is naturally explained via density bounding. A fractally clumpy cloud structure, and a simple law relating the mass of the most luminous star in a young cluster to the mass of its placental gas cloud give model parameters which can account for the observations. We show how the fraction of the Lyc escaping from leaky H II regions which finally completely escapes the galactic disks can ionize large volumes of the ultra-low density intracluster gas around galaxies.