Published in "The Interstellar Medium in Galaxies", eds. H.A. Thronson, Jr. and J. Michael Shull, 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Abstract. This review deals with the theory of multiphase media in astrophysical systems. I discuss the basic reasons for the existence of multiple thermal phases, and the fundamental connection between multiphase media and thermal instability. After describing important examples of multiphase media, I examine the interactions among phases, i.e., mass exchange driven by thermal conduction and hydrodynamic ablation. Mass exchange may compete with radiative heating and cooling for control of the thermal state of the hot phase, and may alter the thermal stability properties of the system.
Table of Contents
Astrophysical gases are often highly inhomogeneous, with two or more "thermal phases" coexisting in rough pressure balance with one another. Compared to the scales of typical inhomogeneities, the transitions between neighboring regions of different temperature (and density) can be quite sharp. Such systems are most often modeled as consisting of cold clouds, filaments or sheets embedded in a hotter intercloud medium, although there may be cases in which a model consisting of hot bubbles in a cold matrix is more appropriate. Usually the topology of the phases is highly uncertain, but the conditions which lead to their existence are more reliably established. The temperatures of the phases sometimes differ by orders of magnitude, and are frequently set within rather narrow ranges by the details of atomic and molecular processes or by the spectrum of ambient radiation. It should be stressed that thermal pressure balance may not be exact, e.g., where magnetic fields or cosmic rays supply a significant fraction of the pressure in one or more phases, where self-gravity or turbulent pressure are dynamically important, where ram pressure (associated with differential motion of the phases) provides part of the confinement, in the case of a cool cloud evaporating suprathermally in a hot background (Balbus and McKee 1982), or when there is simply too little time for a system to achieve dynamical equilibrium. Although the concepts of multiphase media are not generally used to describe regions which are wildly out of dynamical equilibrium with their surroundings (such as material behind a propagating shock front), localized pressure fluctuations may be an important means of transferring material between phases (Wang and Cowie 1988).
This review presents an overview of the theory of thermal phases, with particular attention to their role in the interstellar media of galaxies. In Section 2 I discuss the basic reasons for the existence of multiphase media, and show the connection between multiple phases and thermal instability. I also give examples of multiphase systems which are important in astrophysics. Since the phases are in physical contact, it is unrealistic to treat them as being isolated from one another. Section 3 deals with the principal interactions among phases, thermal conduction and ablation. Taking these interactions into account is particularly important if one wishes to understand the temporal evolution of multiphase media; Section 4 deals with the consequences of mass exchange and with evolutionary models. The "state of the art" is summarized in Section 5. Much of the original material presented in this review was developed in collaboration with C. F. McKee, and is described in greater detail in Begelman and McKee (1990).
The existence of multiple thermal phases is made possible by the flow of
energy into and out
of a system. Multiple phases do not develop in systems which are
thermodynamically isolated
from their surroundings. If
(n, T,
xj) is the heating rate per particle and
(n,
T, xj)
is the cooling function, then the equation of thermal equilibrium may be
written
![]() | (1) |
where n is the density of hydrogen nuclei, T is the
temperature, and xj represents the
fractional concentrations of various species,
xj
nj/n. The pressure is given by
p = xtnkT, where xt =
xj is the
number of particles per hydrogen nucleus. An equation analogous
to (1) determines the ionization equilibrium.
, and sometimes
(e.g., in the
case of inverse Compton cooling), may also depend on the magnitude of some
external heating or ionization agent, which has energy density
u
. If
u
is held fixed then the solution of the
equilibrium equations generates a curve in the
p - n, p - V (where
V
1/n is
the specific
density) or p - T plane which separates the heating region
(
>
n
) from the
cooling region (
<
n
). In
general these curves may have complex shapes and be multivalued.
If there are two or more values of n (or, equivalently, of T), which correspond to a given pressure, then a multiphase equilibrium is possible: a relatively cool, dense region can coexist with one or more warmer, less dense regions in pressure equilibrium. If this configuration is thermally stable (see Section 2.2 below), and if there is no mass exchange between phases, then this equilibrium can persist indefinitely. Simple generic examples of multiphase equilibria are shown in Figure 1. In all cases we have assumed that there is a single stable "cloud" phase with a fixed temperature Tcl. Figs. 1 b and 1 d both show systems with two stable phases, while the other panels show systems with only one stable phase. More realistic phase diagrams may show three or more stable phases, e.g., Lepp et al. (1985).
In most cases of astrophysical interest,
is linear in
u
.
If both
and
are
independent of density (as in particle or photon heating and two-body
cooling) or depend on density through the ratio n /
u
(as in the case of inverse Compton cooling), then both the
ionization level and the temperature depend on n and
u
only
through the combination n /
u
or, equivalently, p /
u
.
This similarity
variable is very useful for characterizing the
state of gas heated by cosmic rays
(Dalgarno and McCray 1972)
or radiation (e.g.,
Tarter, Tucker and Salpeter 1969;
Davidson 1972;
Krolik, McKee and Tarter 1981);
in various forms it is referred to as the ionization parameter.
Not all thermal phases which are observed in astrophysical systems correspond to stable equilibria. Examples of systems which exhibit long-lived non-equilibrium hot phases, in pressure balance with a stable cold phase, are the three-phase interstellar medium (McKee and Ostriker 1977) and cooling flows in clusters of galaxies (Sarazin 1986, and references therein). The non-equilibrium phases in these systems are in fact thermally unstable, and are observable only because their cooling time scales are extremely long (Spitzer 1956). An accurate analysis of such systems requires the treatment of time-dependence (McKee and Ostriker 1977) and hydrodynamical effects such as buoyancy (Balbus and Soker 1989).
2.2. Connection with thermal instability
There is an intimate connection between the existence of thermal phases and the thermal stability of a system: any system exhibiting multiphase equilibria must be thermally unstable over a range of thermodynamic parameters. The thermal stability of astrophysical gases was first studied systematically by Field (1965). His instability criterion was generalized to non-equilibrium systems by Balbus (1986 a), who found the following condition for instability:
![]() | (2) |
Here s is the entropy per hydrogen nucleus and A is some
thermodynamic variable which
is held constant during the perturbation. In equilibrium,
= 0 and this reduces
to Field's instability criterion
![]() | (3) |
In general, s is a complicated function of n, T,
and the state of ionization of the
gas. However, in many applications the gas is almost completely ionized
and the entropy
function may be approximated by the expression for an ideal gas,
s ~ lnpV5/3 + const. If
A is some power law combination of p and V, then
T(s /
T)A
is a constant specific heat which is positive for cases of interest. The
instability criterion then becomes
![]() | (4) |
Since the cooling time is proportional to
T / n, this
criterion can be rephrased as stating
that instability occurs if the cooling time increases with temperature
(Balbus 1986a).
If the gas is in equilibrium
( = 0), the instability
criterion (4) reduces to
![]() | (5) |
Field (1965) showed that for the equilibrium case the isobaric criterion
(
/
T)p
< 0 is
usually the correct one to apply. However, if the system is large enough
that the sound
crossing time is long compared to the heating or cooling times, then for
long wavelengths the isochoric criterion
(
/
T)V
< 0 is applicable.
The stability criterion (5) may be interpreted geometrically in terms of
the equilibrium
curve (Figure 1). Typically the
cooling region
(n >
)
lies above the heating region
because the cooling rate usually increases faster with n and
T than does the heating rate.
If, on the other hand, the heating region lay above the cooling region,
then over much of the
curve (wherever p(V) is single-valued) one would have
(
/
T)V < 0 and the equilibrium
would be isochorically unstable. In this case systems large enough that
the sound crossing
time is much greater than the heating and cooling times could be
unstable even where
smaller systems are isobarically stable. This situation does not arise
in practice and we
therefore assume that the cooling region lies above the heating region
in the p - V plane, as shown in
Figure 1.
The slope of the equilibrium curve in the p - V plane is directly related to the stability of the system since
![]() | (6) |
(Field 1965). For cases in which p(V) is single valued (as in Fig. 1 a-c), the condition that the cooling region lie above the heating region implies that the system is isochorically stable, so that the denominator in equation (6) is positive; hence, in this case isobarically stable regions have a negative slope in the p - V plane, whereas unstable regions have a positive slope. The condition for a multiphase equilibrium is that V(p) be a multivalued function, which is equivalent to having d lnp / d ln V change sign. Thus, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a multiphase equilibrium is that the system be thermally unstable over a finite range of V. This proves the assertion at the beginning of this section. Fig. 1 d illustrates a case in which p(V) is multivalued over a range in V. Such a system can exhibit both isochoric and isobaric instability, where the equilibrium curve has a negative slope in the p - V plane.
A system with two stable phases (e.g.,
Fig. 1b) may be used to
illustrate the inevitability
of multiple phases under certain circumstances. A characteristic feature
of two-phase
systems is that the cold phase cannot exist below some minimum pressure
pmin, while the
hot phase cannot exist above some maximum pressure
pmax. The condition that there be
two stable phases implies that
pmax > pmin. Now consider
a homogeneous system with a density
n1 <
< n2, as shown in
Fig. 2a. Such a system is clearly
unstable in its
homogeneous state. However, it is always possible to stabilize the
system by making it
inhomogeneous, while keeping the mean density constant
(Fig. 2b). The trick is to put
most of the mass in the cold phase, with density
nc > n2,
while a small fraction of the
matter forms a hot intercloud medium, with density
nh < n1 and
temperature Th. Pressure balance requires
nc / nh = Th /
Tcl. If f is the filling factor in cold gas,
then the mean density constraint is
= (1 -
f)nh + fnc, and
f satisfies
Tcl / Th << f <<
1 if n1 <<
<<
n2.
![]() |
Figure 2. Inevitability of thermal
instability in a system with a fixed
mean density |
2.3. Examples of thermal phases
Field, Goldsmith and Habing (FGH: 1969) produced the first specific model for a two-phase equilibrium of the interstellar medium (ISM), in which radiative cooling is balanced by cosmic ray heating. The two phases in the FGH model include cold clouds (T ~ 100 K) and a warm intercloud medium (T ~ 104 K). Other heating mechanisms which may be important (probably more important than cosmic rays [Spitzer 1978]) include diffuse UV and X-ray flux, photoelectric emission by normal grains (Draine 1978; de Jong 1980; Shull and Woods 1985) or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs: d'Hendecourt and Leger 1987; Lepp and Dalgarno 1988), mechanical heating (Cox 1979), magnetoacoustic waves (Spitzer 1982; Ikeuchi and Spitzer 1984), and ion-neutral friction (Scalo 1977; Ferrière, Zweibel and Shull 1988). The characteristic temperatures of the warm and cold thermal phases are insensitive to the details of the heating processes; they simply reflect the energies of the resonance and fine-structure lines, respectively, responsible for cooling the gas. Gas at ~ 104 K may exist in a range of ionization states, and McKee and Ostriker (1977) drew a distinction between the "warm neutral medium" and a "warm (photo)ionized medium" irradiated by UV from hot stars. A molecular phase at ~ 10 K is now known to contain most of the mass in the ISM of the Milky Way, but this component appears to form self-gravitating clouds which are out of pressure balance with the rest of the ISM. A phase diagram for these phases is computed by Lepp et al. (1985).
The gas which emits the broad emission lines in AGN has also been modeled as part of a stable two-phase medium (McCray 1979; Krolik, McKee, and Tarter 1981 [KMT]; Lepp et al. 1985; Krolik 1988). On the basis of observations, the line-emitting gas is inferred to be concentrated in many small clouds which fill a tiny fraction of the volume of the emission line region (Davidson 1972). Compton heating by the observed X-rays provides the minimum level of heating of the hot component of the medium; additional heating due to relativistic particles, radio frequency heating, cloud friction, and shocks may also be important (KMT). Cooling of the hot phase be homogeneous and hot or in two phases; and finally, there is usually a range of densities for which the gas must be in two phases (cf. Fig. 2 and Section 2.2). KMT showed that unless the temperature of the hot gas in the broad line region is well above 108 K, most of the mass is in the hot phase, corresponding to the hot/two-phase case.
Cox and Smith (1974) pointed out that the cooling time of interstellar gas shock-heated by supernova remnants could be longer than the interval between the passage of successive shocks. This suggestion led to the three-phase model of the ISM (McKee and Ostriker 1977), in which most of the volume is occupied by shock-heated gas. This ~ 106 K gas is an example of a non-equilibrium phase, the possibility of which was foreseen by Spitzer (1956). Because it is produced dynamically, and has a temperature of order the virial temperature of the Galaxy, it has proven very difficult to determine the fate of the hot intercloud medium. It is not at all clear whether it cools radiatively in a region close to the disk (McKee and Ostriker 1977) or is vented into the halo through "chimneys" (McCray and Kafatos 1987; Norman and Ikeuchi 1989), where it undergoes a combination of adiabatic and radiative cooling (the "Galactic fountain": Shapiro and Field 1976; Cox 1981; Wang and Cowie 1988). It is also not known whether the hot gas cools sufficiently in the halo to form clouds which eventually rain down on the disk, remains hot enough to drive a galactic wind, or somehow does both. Finally, the effects of spatial correlations among Type II supernovae (in OB associations) are just beginning to be appreciated (McCray and Kafatos 1987).
Cooling flows in elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters are also thought to have a nonequilibrium two-phase structure. When the existence of cooling flows was first recognized (Cowie and Binney 1977; Fabian and Nulsen 1977), it was pointed out that the cooling gas should be thermally unstable to the formation of cool (~ 104 K) filaments (Fabian and Nulsen 1977; Mathews and Bregman 1978; Cowie, Fabian and Nulsen 1980). Optical emission lines have been observed in the central regions of many cooling flows (Lynds 1970; Heckman 1981; Cowie et al. 1983; Ru, Cowie and Wang 1985; Johnstone, Fabian and Nulsen 1987; Heckman et al. 1989). However, the development of linear thermal instability is severely hampered by buoyancy (Balbus 1988; Balbus and Soker 1989), and it is not clear whether the filaments grow from finite but small perturbations or are advected inward in a highly nonlinear form (Nulsen 1986). Furthermore, the mechanism which excites the emission lines is very uncertain, and may play a role creating and maintaining the multiphase structure. Multiphase models of cooling flows have been studied by Nulsen (1986); Thomas, Fabian and Nulsen (1987); Thomas (1988); and Böhringer and Fabian (1989).
An extreme version of the cooling flow instability has been proposed to account for the masses of protogalaxies (Rees and Ostriker 1977; Silk 1977) and of globular clusters (Fall and Rees 1985). The basic idea of these models is that a self-gravitating gas cloud will fragment only when its cooling time becomes shorter than its free-fall time, and then it will develop a two-phase structure in which just enough material drops out of the hot phase to keep the cooling time roughly comparable to the free-fall time. Characteristic mass scales are determined by the Jeans mass of the cold phase in pressure balance with the hot phase. Triggering of star formation by radio lobes expanding into a protogalactic multiphase medium has been proposed (Rees 1989; Begelman and Cioffi 1989) to account for the observed radio/optical alignments in high-redshift radio galaxies (McCarthy et al. 1987; Chambers, Miley and van Breugel 1987). Cool gas in the multiphase protogalactic environment might give rise to some quasar absorption line systems (Hogan 1987) as well as the extended emission-line "fuzz" around high-redshift quasars (Rees 1988).
3.1. Evaporation and condensation
Thermal conduction tries to destroy multiphase structure by erasing temperature gradients. Whether this tendency toward homogenization leads to evaporation of clouds or the condensation of hot phase onto existing clouds depends on the cooling function in the hot phase, as well as the sizes and distribution of clouds. The efficiency of thermal conduction also depends on the magnetic connectivity between the phases, which is poorly understood. Although the conductivity perpendicular to a magnetic field line is almost completely suppressed, any connection between the phases, albeit by tangled field lines, is likely to suppress the conductivity only by a factor of a few (Tribble 1989). In a fully ionized cosmic plasma the "classical" coefficient of conductivity is
![]() | (7) |
(Spitzer 1962;
Draine and Giuliani 1984),
where the factor c
1 allows for a reduction in
the mean free path due to magnetic fields or turbulence. Equation (7) is
appropriate when
the electron mean free path is sufficiently short compared to
T / |
T|
that heat conduction can be treated in the diffusion approximation,
=
-
T. When the
diffusion approximation breaks down, the conductive heat flux first
enters the saturated regime
(Cowie and McKee 1977),
qsat =
5
s
cs p (where cs = (p /
)1/2
is the isothermal sound speed in the intercloud medium and
s is a
suppression factor similar to
c), and
eventually the "suprathermal" regime
(Balbus and McKee 1982),
in which thermal conduction is best treated by a two-fluid approach.
The inhibition of multiphase structure by thermal conduction was first discussed by Field (1965), who found that conduction suppresses thermal instability for wavelengths shorter than a critical value which Begelman and McKee (1990) have generalized and dubbed the Field length,
![]() | (8) |
where M
Max(
,
/ n).
F is
the maximum length scale across which thermal
conduction can dominate over radiative heating and cooling. Therefore,
the thickness of a
conductive interface with a radius of curvature rc is
~ min(
F,
rc)
(McKee and Cowie 1977).
This implies that conduction into clouds with radii smaller than
F is
unaffected by heating and cooling processes in the surrounding
medium. Such "small" clouds always evaporate
(Graham and Langer 1973;
Cowie and McKee 1977),
at a rate given by
![]() | (9) |
in the classical conduction limit. Clouds with radii larger than
F have
conductive interfaces whose structures are independent of the cloud
size; such interfaces are dominated by
the balance between conduction and heating/cooling, and may be treated
as plane-parallel.
Steady plane-parallel conduction fronts have been analyzed by
Zel'dovich and Pikel'ner (1969),
Penston and Brown (1970),
and McKee and Begelman (1990).
Ballet, Arnaud and Rothenflug (1986)
and Böhringer and Hartquist (1987)
studied non-equilibrium ionization
in steady evaporative flows. Time-dependent mass exchange has been
analyzed in one dimension by
Doroshkevich and Zel'dovich (1981),
by Balbus (1986b),
who included magnetic fields, and by
Borkowski, Balbus and Fristrom (1989)
who also studied the ionization
structure. If the hot phase is cooling (and is thermally unstable) then
a cooling wave of
fixed thickness propagates into the hot gas following an evaporative
transi
Böhringer and Fabian 1989)
used this result to argue that steady-state
evaporation solutions are incorrect, i.e., that all clouds embedded in a
cooling background
medium should condense, not evaporate. However, the evaporative
transient lasts until
the temperature gradient relaxes to the Field length, and the timescale
for this to occur is the cooling time. The evaporative solutions found by
Cowie and McKee (1977)
persist over a time scale which is short compared to the cooling time,
but long compared to the
time required to set up the evaporation flow. If the hot phase is
thermally stable, then
there exists a "saturated vapor pressure"
psat above which "large" clouds condense, and
below which they evaporate
(Penston and Brown 1970).
Zel'dovich and Pikel'ner (1969)
devised an approximate method for calculating the evaporation rate when
p
psat, which was refined and generalized to spherical
clouds by
McKee and Begelman (1990).
3.2. Ablation
The motion of clouds with respect to the ambient hot medium leads to
Kelvin-Helrnholtz
and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, which can break up the clouds into
smaller pieces and
accelerate mass exchange between the phases. Both instabilities operate
on time scales ti ~
(c
/
h)1/2 rc /
v, where v is
the relative speed between the cloud and the hot medium and
c /
h
~ Th/Tc in pressure
equilibrium. Most studies have concentrated on the fate
of a cloud overtaken by a strong supernova or spiral density-wave shock
(Woodward 1976;
Nittman, Falle and Gaskell 1982;
Heathcote and Brand 1983;
McKee 1988;
Klein, McKee and Colella 1989).
in this case ti is of the same order as the
"cloud-crushing" time, tcc,
which is the time scale required for a secondary shock to be driven into
a cloud once it is overrun by the main shock
(McKee 1988).
The cloud destruction process is accelerated by
the significant pressure differential between the sides of the cloud and
its front and back
(Nittman, Falle and Gaskell 1982).
The unbalanced forces cause the cloud to "pancake",
i.e., to spread sideways, and the increase in cross-section speeds up
the momentum
deposition which tears apart the cloud. Pressure fluctuations and
vorticity generation arising
from the interactions of multiple shocks also play an important role in
cloud disruption
(Klein, McKee and Colella 1989).
The time scale for ablated cloud material to be effectively mixed with
the intercloud
medium should lie somewhere between ti and the
hydrodynamic drag time, td ~
(c
/
h)
rc/v.
Nulsen (1982),
using the
longer time scale td, estimated that cold gas would
be ablated from a cloud at a rate
ab ~
r2c
h
v. If thermal conduction were negligible,
the cloud would leave behind a cylindrical "trail" with a radius
~ rc, containing cold material with a mean density
<
>tr ~
h.
If the ablated gas is well-mixed with the hot phase
downstream of the cloud, as we might expect from a turbulent ablation
process, then the
global time scale for cooling the hot phase by ablation is simply the
time required for the trails to fill space,
tab ~ rc /
fv, where f
is the filling factor in clouds.
tab is shorter than the cloud
disruption time if the clouds contain more mass than the hot phase, and
it is longer than the saturated evaporation time by a f actor
~
-1,
where
is the Mach
number of cloud motion relative to the hot phase.
For diffuse interstellar clouds moving through the hot phase of the ISM
in the Milky Way,
~ 0.1.
According to the
Nulsen (1982)
model, ablation from subsonically moving
clouds is a less important mechanism for destroying clouds than
conduction in the
saturated limit, but may be more important than conduction in the
classical limit, i.e.,
for large clouds. For clouds moving nearly sonically, e.g., randomly
moving clouds in the
spheroidal component of a galaxy, hydrodynamical instabilities are
probably the most
efficient mechanism for shredding clouds to the point where thermal
mixing via conduction is very efficient.
Lateral expansion of the cloud can shorten the hydrodynamic drag time
considerably
(Nittman, Falle and Gaskell 1982;
Klein, McKee and Colella 1989).
Klein, McKee and
Colella find that the drag time is of order ti for
density contrasts
c /
h
as high as 100, but
for much larger density contrasts the cloud is torn apart before it
slows significantly. These
calculations suggest that mixing can occur much more rapidly than
predicted by the
Nulsen (1982)
model. Further numerical simulations capable of following the
mixing process with
high resolution are clearly needed to test the basic assumptions of any
ablation model.
4.1. Mass exchange vs. radiative heating/cooling
When the bulk of the energy content and the bulk of the mass content reside in different phases, a relatively small amount of mass or energy transfer between phases can have a large effect on the structure of a multiphase medium. Such a situation is believed to exist in the three-phase model of the ISM (McKee and Ostriker 1977), where the hot phase occupies most of the volume while most of the mass is in cold clouds. Physically, the effect of mass exchange (either by conduction or ablation followed by effective mixing) is to cool the hot phase, since a fixed amount of energy is being distributed among a larger number of particles. Since radiative heating and cooling depend on both density and temperature, mass exchange can affect the radiative evolution of the medium as well. We can illustrate the global consequences of mass and energy exchange between phases by considering a medium with uniform pressure and subsonic motions, in which mass exchange is driven by thermal conduction. The approximate time-dependent equations governing the medium are then
![]() | (10) |
![]() | (11) |
where
represents
the conductive heat flux. Note that these equations are appropriate
in the single-fluid limit, corresponding to classical or mildly
saturated conduction
(Cowie and McKee 1977):
in the highly saturated suprathermal limit
(Balbus and McKee 1982),
both the single-fluid approximation and the assumption of pressure
balance break down.
The evolution of the medium is driven by the terms on the
right-hand-side of eq. (11), and
may be dominated either by the effects of conduction or by the effects
of radiative heating and cooling.
There is a crucial distinction between the heat flux term and the
radiative loss term in
the energy equation: the energy entering or leaving a volume of radius
r due to conduction is proportional to r2
q( r
for classical conduction) whereas that due to heating or cooling
is proportional to r3. Thus, there is a critical
length scale which enters the problem, which
turns out to be the Field length,
F
(eq. [8]), when mass exchange is driven by classical conduction.
The temperature structure of the intercloud medium in a system of clouds
extending
over a region of size R depends on the ratio of the Field length to
R.
Balbus (1985)
developed an elegant electrostatic analogy for an ensemble of clouds in
a hot intercloud
medium under conditions in which radiative heating and cooling are
negligible and the
temperature is specified on the boundary of the ensemble. This
corresponds to the case R <<
F. In a
steady state, the
evaporation rate and the temperature structure in the intercloud
medium are then determined by a solution of Laplace's equation with
Dirichlet boundary
conditions. In the complementary case, R >>
F, global heat
flows are insignificant and
the temperature structure of the intercloud gas is determined by a
competition between
cloud evaporation on the one hand and heating and cooling on the
other. Numerically, the Field length is
![]() | (12) |
where T6
T/106
K and
M-23
M /
(10-23 erg cm3 s-1) is normalized to a
characteristic value of the radiative cooling rate for astrophysical
plasmas.
To quantify the competition between mass exchange and radiative
heating/cooling,
consider the spatially averaged effect of cloud evaporation on the hot
phase. This is
meaningful only when the characteristic temperature of the hot phase
changes over a length
scale which exceeds the mean intercloud separation
r0. This condition is guaranteed to be
satisfied when r0 is smaller than
F. When
r0 exceeds
F, then
mass exchange cannot compete with radiative heating and cooling anyway,
so the point is moot. If there are
ncl(
3/4
r30) clouds per unit volume
evaporating at a mean rate
ev per
cloud, then the density of the intercloud medium changes at a rate
![]() | (13) |
where ev is
negative for condensation. We may then use
ev to define an
effective evaporative cooling rate,
![]() | (14) |
(Begelman and McKee 1990).
The evaporative cooling coefficient
ev is
analogous to the radiative cooling coefficient
in that both
reduce the specific entropy s, but there are
crucial differences between the two:
reduces the total
entropy of a given volume of intercloud gas, whereas
ev
increases it;
reduces the energy density of the intercloud gas, whereas
ev
leaves it unchanged. Because of these distinctions,
ev
should not be included in the net radiative cooling function
. However, the relative
impact of mass exchange and
radiative heating/cooling on the thermal state of the intercloud medium
can be expressed by the radiation/evaporation ratio
(Begelman and McKee 1990),
![]() | (15) |
When M
M /
ev is
>> 1( << 1), then radiative heating and cooling (mass exchange)
determines the thermal state of the intercloud medium.
One can express in
terms of quantities which characterize the structure of the
two-phase medium. Writing the evaporation rate in the form
ev =
4
r2c
h
csf, where cs
is the isothermal sound speed in the hot phase, we have
![]() | (16) |
r0 may be eliminated in favor of the cloud filling
factor f (assumed to be << 1) by substituting
rc/f for
r03 / rc2. In
the limit of saturated evaporation F ~ a few
(Cowie and McKee 1977),
while
F ~ / 4 in the
Nulsen (1982)
model of ablation. In the classical conduction
limit, F is twice the "saturation parameter"
'0 derived by
Cowie and McKee (1977),
with the result that
![]() | (17) |
Cloud evaporation thus determines the intercloud temperature for
rc > r30 /
F2.
The corresponding condition on the filling factor is
![]() | (18) |
or f > (r0 /
F)6;
for f ~ 0.03, as in the ISM, this will
be true if
F
2r0. In terms of the
sound-crossing time across rc (measured in the hot phase),
ts ~ rc / 2cs, and
the radiative cooling time in the hot phase,
tc ~ 5kTh / 2nh
(Th)
, we may express the condition for mass
exchange to dominate globally in the form
![]() | (19) |
Writing (18) in the form
r0 < r1/3c
F2/3,
we see that the intercloud spacing in a
conduction-dominated medium must also be smaller than the Field
length. This has
important consequences for the thermal stability of the hot phase in a
conduction-dominated system. Since
F is
roughly the minimum wavelength which is thermally unstable
(Field 1965),
potentially unstable regions must contain many clouds. The
conduction-modified
condition for thermal instability is obtained simply by including
ev
in Balbus's (1986a)
criterion (eq. [4]):
![]() | (20) |
(Begelman and McKee 1990).
nh
ev /
Th is
generally an increasing function of Th: for
isobaric perturbations nh
ev /
Th ~ q
Th7/2(Th1/2)
for classical (saturated) conduction.
Therefore, evaporation has a stabilizing influence on the hot
phase, and in a
conduction-dominated medium thermal instability will be inhibited by the
presence of evaporating clouds
(Begelman and McKee 1990).
This will be true even if the radiative processes place
the hot phase in a thermally unstable regime. However, it should be
noted that the cooling
time scale in the hot phase of a conduction-dominated medium is shorter
than the radiative
cooling time scale. Therefore, conduction cannot stabilize a hot phase
over a time scale
which is longer than the time scale for radiative thermal
instability. However, it can lead
to the hot phase cooling down somewhat before the onset of thermal
instability. Since
thermal conduction generally becomes less important at low temperatures,
such a system
may evolve to a state in which evaporative cooling no longer dominates,
whereupon thermal
instability may occur. Since the Field length is generally a strongly
increasing function of
temperature, the operation of thermal instability may lead to the
production of smaller
and more closely spaced clouds than would have formed in the hotter medium.
It is instructive to apply the ideas discussed above to the three-phase
model of the ISM
(McKee and Ostriker 1977).
The three-phase ISM consists of cold HI clouds
surrounded by warm HI and HII envelopes, all embedded in a pervasive hot
ionized medium
(HIM). The physical conditions in the HIM are governed by mass exchange
with the clouds
and energy injection by supernovae. The model is intrinsically
time-dependent: A given
element of gas is compressed and heated by SNRs at intervals of about
5 × 105 yr, and
this makes its evolution difficult to analyze using concepts developed
to treat steady-state
or slowly evolving systems. Nonetheless, it is of interest to evaluate
the Field length and
the radiation/evaporation ratio. Using the fit to the cooling function
of Raymond, Cox and Smith (1976)
for cosmic abundances,
(T)
1.6 ×
10-19T-1/2 erg cm3
s-1 (105 K
< T < 4 × 107 K), multiplied by an
enhancement factor
10
1
10 to take account of
nonequilibrium ionization and density inhomogeneity near conduction fronts
(McKee and Ostriker 1977),
we have
F =
44(
c1/2
T36 /
4
11/2) pc, where
4
p /
104k and
T6
Th/106 K. We can write condition (18) in
the form
![]() | (21) |
It is evident that the relative importance of conductive and radiative
energy exchange
is sensitive to conditions in the hot phase, particularly to
Th, as well as to the filling
factor and typical size of clouds. Under the conditions deduced by McKee
and Ostriker
(T6 = 0.45,
4 = 0.36,
1
= 1, rc = 2.1
pc, and f = 0.23), condition (21) is marginally
satisfied. Equivalently, the radiation/evaporation ratio is given by
R = 0.38, which implies
that evaporative cooling dominates radiative cooling and that the HIM is
thermally stable.
(The argument that evaporation can stabilize the HIM is originally due
to McCray [1986].)
However, even a small amount of cloud ablation by hydrodynamic processes
(Section 3.2) or a
slight increase in the HIM temperature would lead to a drastic increase
in the energetic
importance of evaporation. If the typical clouds were sufficiently small
that conduction
were saturated, i.e., for
![]() | (22) |
(Cowie and McKee 1977; Balbus and McKee 1982), the appropriate version of condition (19) would be
![]() | (23) |
In the McKee-Ostriker picture, each region of HIM is overrun by another
supernova remnant before it has time relax to a stationary state with
1. Stochastic heating
by SNR shocks thus leads to discontinuous trajectories in the p -
V plane, and heating
is balanced by radiative cooling. In the galactic fountain model
(Shapiro and Field 1976;
Wang and Cowie 1988),
the heat is advected into the galactic halo. If clouds are effectively
ablated then the accelerated lowering of Th by
evaporation may allow the large tracts of
the ISM to cool to a homogeneous state at
T
104 K. The intercloud medium remains
thermally stable until radiative cooling begins to dominate over
evaporative cooling, at Th
105
K. Since the Field length is a strongly increasing
function of Th, the onset of
instability at a reduced temperature may lead to the formation of
sub-parsec size clouds.
4.2. Evolution of multiphase systems
By averaging the equations of mass and energy conservation over a volume
(V) which
contains many clouds, one can derive equations for the global evolution
of the hot intercloud medium in the presence of mass exchange with
embedded clouds
(Begelman and McKee 1990).
The mass of intercloud gas in
is
h
µH
, where
h is the mean
density of the
intercloud gas in
.
Choosing the volume
to comove with the intercloud gas implies that
this mass can change only by cloud evaporation, at a rate
ev
µH
. Mass conservation for
the intercloud gas then becomes
![]() | (24) |
Integration of equation (11) over
then implies
![]() | (25) |
where s is the surface bounding
. By assuming that the
characteristic dimension of the
averaging volume is large compared to the Field length, we ensure that
the conductive heat
flux term in equation (25) is negligible compared to the heating and
cooling term. The global energy equation then simplifies to
![]() | (26) |
where
< >
denotes an average over the volume
. Note that mass
exchange does not enter
this equation: mass exchange alters the density and temperature of the
intercloud gas, but not its pressure.
Additional constraints are required to solve for the evolution of a
specific system.
Since the cloud evaporation rate depends on the typical cloud size, it
is necessary to have
an equation for the evolution of rc in time. There are
also likely to be externally imposed
constraints on the intercloud medium; Begelman and McKee (1990)
considered two limiting
cases. In the isochoric limit, tile comoving volume
is
held constant as the system evolves.
If one assumes that the clouds are fixed as well, then the mean density
also remains
constant. This condition would apply in a system in which the sound
crossing time R/cs is
long compared to both the characteristic heating/cooling time and the
evaporation time.
Such a situation might apply locally within a supersonic accretion flow
or wind. Setting
= 0 in
eqs. (24) and (26), we obtain
![]() | (27) |
and
![]() | (28) |
In the isobaric limit, the intercloud medium can exchange mass with a reservoir in order to maintain a constant pressure, so we set p(t) = constant. Such a situation might apply, for example, if the system were in contact with an X-ray heated wind above an accretion disk (Begelman, McKee and Shields 1983). We then have
![]() | (29) |
The instantaneous state of the intercloud medium can be described by the
location of a point in the p - V plane (cf.
Fig. 1);
V
n-1h
is the specific volume of the intercloud
gas. The radiative equilibrium curve
n2h
= 0
divides the plane into two regions: above
the curve, radiative cooling exceeds the external heating, whereas below
the curve the converse is true. The net cooling rate
n2h
may be
assumed to be a known function of p
and V everywhere on the plane. However, the evaporation rate
ev also depends
on the distribution of cloud sizes and separations.
The character of a trajectory in the p - V plane is
determined by the
relative importance of energy exchange and mass exchange, which is expressed
quantitatively by the radiation/evaporation ratio
(eq. [16]). in the
isochoric case, the slope of trajectories in
the p - V plane is governed by the ratio of equations (27)
and (28):
![]() | (30) |
Trajectories are nearly vertical if radiative cooling and heating are
dominant
(|| >> 1),
and nearly horizontal if mass exchange is dominant
(|
| << 1). It
is immediately obvious
that trajectories must be locally horizontal
(dp / dV = 0) where they cross the equilibrium curve
(
= 0), provided that
ev
0 at the
point of crossing. Points at which
=
ev = 0
represent stationary states. The temperature evolves as
![]() | (31) |
Trajectories with
= - 3/5 are
isothermal. Isobaric trajectories are constrained to be
horizontal in the p - V plane. The direction (and rate) of
motion is given by equation (29), which may be written in the form
![]() | (32) |
Since T pV
V in the
isobaric case, this equation also describes the temperature
evolution of the system. The point
= - 1 represents a
steady state for the hot phase,
although mass continues to be lost (if
< 0) or gained (if
> 0) by clouds in
this state (unlike the "true" steady state
=
ev = 0
in the isochoric case). For a system
dominated by radiative heating or cooling
(|
| >> 1),
evolution is leftward above the
thermal equilibrium curve and rightward below the curve. In a system
dominated by mass exchange
(|
| << 1),
evolution is leftward for evaporation and rightward for condensation.
A more detailed discussion of p - V plane trajectories may
be found in
Begelman and McKee (1990),
who considered the specific case of a gas heated by
Compton scattering and
cooled by bremsstrahlung and the inverse Compton effect. They also
discuss the stability properties of evolving systems.
Multiple thermal phases are known to exist in many astrophysical systems. The reasons for their existence are understood in general terms, but the detailed properties of specific multiphase systems are poorly known. We can look forward to the further development of multiphase models for the ISM in elliptical galaxies, cooling flows in clusters of galaxies, the intergalactic medium, and protogalactic environments. The structures of multiphase media are sensitive to the rate of mass exchange between phases, which tends to lower the temperature of the hot phase and render it thermally stable. Unfortunately, mass exchange through thermal conduction depends on the topology of conduction fronts and on the magnetic connectivity of the phases, neither of which is understood. However, mixing of the phases may be driven by hydrodynamic instabilities at a rate much faster than that due to thermal conduction. Rapidly improving hydrodynamic codes with a high dynamic range in spatial resolution (e.g., using an adaptive mesh) should clarify some of the physics of the ablation process within the next few years.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Many of the ideas presented above were developed collaboratively with C. F. McKee. Portions of the text borrow heavily (and in some cases verbatim) from Begelman and McKee (1990), which is to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. Preparation of this article was supported in part by NSF grant AST88-16140, NASA Astrophysical Theory Center grant NAGW-766, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.