What is Driving the H I Velocity Dispersion?

We explore what dominant physical mechanism sets the kinetic energy contained in neutral, atomic (H I) gas. Both supernova (SN) explosions and magnetorotational instability (MRI) have been proposed to drive turbulence in gas disks and we compare the H I line widths predicted from turbulence driven by these mechanisms to direct observations in 11 disk galaxies. We use high-quality maps of the H I mass surface density and line width, obtained by The H I Nearby Galaxy Survey. We show that all sample galaxies exhibit a systematic radial decline in the H I line width, which appears to be a generic property of H I disks and also implies a radial decline in kinetic energy density of H I. At a galactocentric radius of r ₂₅—often comparable to the extent of significant star formation—there is a characteristic value of the H I velocity dispersion of 10 ± 2 km s^-1. Inside this radius, galaxies show H I line widths well above the thermal value (corresponding to ~8 km s^-1) expected from a warm H I component, implying that turbulence drivers must be responsible for maintaining this line width. Therefore, we compare maps of H I kinetic energy to maps of the star formation rate (SFR)—a proxy for the SN rate—and to predictions for energy generated by MRI. We find a positive correlation between kinetic energy of H I and SFR; this correlation also holds at fixed Σ_{H I}, as expected if SNe were driving turbulence. For a given turbulence dissipation timescale, we can estimate the energy input required to maintain the observed kinetic energy. The SN rate implied by the observed recent SFR is sufficient to maintain the observed velocity dispersion, if the SN feedback efficiency is at least epsilon_SN sime 0.1 × (10⁷ yr/τ _D ), assuming τ _D sime 10⁷ yr for the turbulence dissipation timescale. Beyond r ₂₅, this efficiency would have to increase to unrealistic values, epsilon gsim 1, suggesting that mechanical energy input from young stellar populations does not supply most kinetic energy in outer disks. On the other hand, both thermal broadening and turbulence driven by MRI can plausibly produce the velocity dispersions and kinetic energies that we observe in this regime (gsimr ₂₅).