The Mass and Absorption Columns of Galactic Gaseous Halos

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive model of galactic gaseous halos that explains ion distributions and column densities across different galaxy masses, incorporating cooling, photoionization, and feedback effects.

Contribution

The study introduces a multi-phase cooling and photoionization model that accurately reproduces observed ion columns in galactic halos across a wide mass range.

Findings

OVI column density is ~10^14 cm^-2 across various galaxy masses.

Photoionization dominates OVI production in low-mass galaxies.

The model suggests a halo metallicity of ~0.55 Zsun and maximum temperature of ~1.9 million K.

Abstract

The galactic gaseous halo is a gas reservoir for the interstellar medium in the galaxy disk, supplying materials for star formation. We developed a gaseous halo model connecting the galaxy disk and the gaseous halo by assuming the star formation rate on the disk is balanced by the radiative cooling rate of the gaseous halo, including stellar feedback. In addition to a single-temperature gaseous halo in collisional ionization equilibrium, we also consider the photoionization effect and a steady-state cooling model. Photoionization is important for modifying the ion distribution in low-mass galaxies and outskirts of massive galaxies due to the low densities. The multi-phase cooling model dominates the region within the cooling radius, where t_cooling=t_Hubble. Our model reproduces most of the observed high ionization state ions for a wide range of galaxy masses (i.e., OVI, OVII, NeVIII, MgX, and OVIII). We find that the OVI column density has a narrow range around ~10^14 cm^-2 for halo masses from M_star ~ 3 * 10^10 Msun to 6*10^12 Msun, which is consistent with some but not all observational studies. For galaxies with halo masses <~ 3 * 10^11 Msun, photoionization produces most of the OVI, while for more massive galaxies, the OVI is from the medium that is cooling from higher temperatures. Fitting the Galactic (Milky-Way) OVII and OVIII suggests a gaseous halo model where the metallicity is ~0.55 Zsun and the gaseous halo has a maximum temperature of ~ 1.9 * 10^6 K. This gaseous halo model does not close the census of baryonic material within R200.