Origin of turbulence and prevalence of gravitational instabilities

Determine the relative importance of stellar feedback and gravitational instabilities in driving turbulence, radial gas transport, and disk evolution across the broader high-redshift galaxy population.

Background

The paper contrasts two interpretations of turbulent high-redshift disks. One attributes turbulence and radial transport primarily to violent disk instabilities, while another, supported by more recent cold-gas observations, suggests that stellar feedback may dominate. Existing measurements are restricted mainly to massive galaxies, leaving the relative contributions of these processes unconstrained in typical and lower-mass systems.

The proposed resolved observations would measure gas streaming, non-circular motions, and disk-wide turbulence in order to distinguish feedback-driven turbulence from gravitationally driven transport and instabilities.