The impact of galactic fountains on the global evolution of galaxy disks

The evolution of the Milky Way, and its thin disc in particular, is a history of continuous accretion of fresh gas from the surrounding environment. Evidence for this accretion taking place include high-velocity clouds (HVCs) that appear to be raining down from the halo. I present a model that explains the formation of the prototypical HVC Complex C as gas cooling of the Galactic corona triggered by the explosion of a superbubble in the Outer arm occurred 150 Myr ago. This result is obtained with a new galactic fountain model combined with high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations. The material ejected by the superbubble has triggered the condensation of a large portion of the circumgalactic medium and caused its subsequent accretion on to the disc. This is a local manifestation of fountain-driven cooling of the lower Galactic corona that can contribute significantly in brining fresh low-metallicity gas to the disc of our Galaxy. The same model also reproduces the global-scale kinematics of the extraplanar gas and predicts a gas accretion that evolves inside-out