The Milky Way's Kiloparsec Scale Wind: A Hybrid Cosmic-Ray and Thermally Driven Outflow

Understand

We apply a wind model, driven by combined cosmic-ray and thermal-gas pressure, to the Milky Way, and show that the observed Galactic diffuse soft X-ray emission can be better explained by a wind than by previous static gas models.

• We find that cosmic-ray pressure is essential to driving the observed wind.
• Having thus defined a "best-fit" model for a Galactic wind, we explore variations in the base parameters and show how the wind's properties vary with changes in gas pressure, cosmic-ray pressure and density.
• We demonstrate the importance of cosmic rays in launching winds, and the effect cosmic rays have on wind dynamics.