The role of radiation pressure in the dynamics of HII regions at z>1
Silvia Verdolini, University of Leiden
Advisor: Mark Krumholz, UCSC
Abstract: Observations of starburst galaxy at high redshift hint that the ionization parameter at z ~ 2 is higher than in the local universe. Following Krumholz & Matzner (2009), a physical explanation of a higher ionization parameter can be a radiation pressure-dominated HII region population. We wrote a population synthesis code to generate a family of HII regions and let them evolve following a solution that acconts for both radiation pressure- and gas pressure-dominated evolution. We suppose that the galaxy is spatially unresolved, and that the star formation rate and the ambient density are constant. We find that the ionization parameter increases for Lyman-Break galaxies.
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