Winds in galaxies

Only a small fraction (<20%) of baryonic matter in the Universe is turned into stars, indicating that galaxies have been fairly inefficient in forming stars from their available reservoir of gas across the cosmic time. Unveiling which process regulates star formation in galaxies is a still-standing problem in astrophysics. Galaxy-scale outflows generated by the energetic outputs of accreting massive black holes lying at the centre of galaxies are usually invoked to explain the star formation inefficiency in massive galaxies. In the last two decades, a large number of outflows have been detected, indicating that these devastating mechanisms are quite common throughout galaxy evolution. However, despite the overall steady growth of observational results, the actual role played by massive outflows is still debated, especially at very high redshift (z>2) where observational evidence for outflowing gas are still limited. The developments proposed in WINGS are exactly designed to finally settle whether galactic outflows are able to shape galaxies or not. By exploiting the observations of the spectrograph NIRSpec on board of the forthcoming space-based telescope JWST, I will investigate, for the first time ever the impact of outflows on galaxies within the first 2 billion years of the age of the Universe. To achieve the goal of WINGS, I will combine cutting-edge observations, dynamical models, and simulations in an original way. The three main objectives of the projects are as follows: (a) to produce dynamical 3D outflow models and synthetic observations to accurately determine outflow parameters; (b) to study the outflow internal structure and kinematics, and determine the fate of the outflowing gas; (c) to quantify the impact of galactic outflows in galaxies. WINGS will allow a major step forward in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.