Global simulations of galactic discs: violent feedback from clustered supernovae during bursts of star formation

A suite of idealized, global, gravitationally unstable, star-forming galactic disc simulations with 2 pc spatial resolution, performed with the adaptive mesh refinement code RAMSES, is used in this paper to predict the emergent effects of supernova feedback. The simulations include a simplified prescription for the formation of single stellar populations of mass similar to 100M(circle dot), radiative cooling, photoelectric heating, an external gravitational potential for a dark matter halo and an old stellar disc, self-gravity, and a novel implementation of supernova feedback. The results of these simulations show that gravitationally unstable discs can generate violent supersonic winds with mass-loading factors eta greater than or similar to 10, followed by a galactic fountain phase. These violent winds are generated by highly clustered supernovae exploding in dense environments created by gravitational instability, and they are not produced in simulation without self-gravity. The violent winds significantly perturb the vertical structure of the disc, which is later re-established during the galactic fountain phase. Gas resettles into a quasisteady, highly turbulent disc with volume-weighted velocity dispersion sigma > 50 km s(-1). The new configuration drives weaker galactic winds with a mass-loading factor eta <= 0.1. The whole cycle takes place in <= 10 dynamical times. Such high time variability needs to be taken into account when interpreting observations of galactic winds from starburst and post-starburst galaxies.