A hot gaseous galaxy halo candidate with Mg X absorption

TL;DR

This study reports the discovery of Mg X absorption in a galaxy halo, indicating the presence of hot gas at about 10^6 K, and models the gas as a multi-temperature, volume-filled halo rather than interaction layers.

Contribution

First detection of Mg X absorption in a galaxy halo, providing new insights into the hot gas component and its temperature distribution.

Findings

Mg X detected at 5.8 sigma significance.

Hot gas temperature around 10^6 K consistent with virialized halos.

Multi-temperature models fit the observed ion column densities.

Abstract

The hot gas in galaxy halos may account for a significant fraction of missing baryons in galaxies, and some of these gases can be traced by high ionization absorption systems in QSO UV spectra. Using high S/N ratio $ HST$/COS spectra, we discovered a high ionization state system at $z=1.1912$ in the sightline toward \object{LBQS 1435-0134}, and two-components absorption lines are matched for Mg X, Ne VIII, Ne VI, O VI, Ne V, O V, Ne IV, O IV, N IV, O III, and H I. Mg X, detected for the first time ($5.8 \sigma$), is a particularly direct tracer of hot galactic halos, as its peak ion fraction occurs near $10^{6.1}\rm~ K$, about the temperature of a virialized hot galaxy halo of mass $\sim 0.5 M^*$. With Mg X and NeVIII, a photoionization model cannot reproduce the observed column densities with path lengths of galaxy halos. For collisional ionization models, one or two temperature models do not produce acceptable fits, but a three temperature model or a power law model can produce the observed results. In the power law model, ${\rm d}N/{\rm d}T = 10^{4.4\pm 2.2-[Z/X]} T^{1.55\pm 0.41}$ with temperatures in the range $10^{4.39\pm0.13} {\rm~K} < T < 10^{6.04\pm0.05}~ {\rm K}$, the total hydrogen column density is $8.2 \times 10^{19} (0.3Z_{\odot}/Z) \rm~ cm^{-2}$ and the positive power law index indicates most of the mass is at the high temperature end. We suggest that this absorption system is a hot volume-filled galaxy halo rather than interaction layers between the hot halo and cool clouds. The temperature dependence of the column density is likely due to the local mixture of multiple phase gases.