Exploring the Milky Way Circumgalactic Medium in a Cosmological Context with a Semi-Analytic Model

TL;DR

This study integrates a semi-analytic galaxy formation model with a CGM model to analyze the properties of the Milky Way's circumgalactic medium, providing insights into its mass, metallicity, and ion column densities.

Contribution

It combines galaxy formation simulations with CGM modeling to predict gas profiles, ion columns, and pressure support in Milky Way-like galaxies, advancing understanding of CGM structure.

Findings

CGM mass correlates with metallicity in simulated galaxies.

Power-law density profiles with slopes 0.75 to 1.25 fit the models.

Models with CGM mass 3-10 x 10^{10} M_sun match observations.

Abstract

We combine the Santa-Cruz Semi-Analytic Model (SAM) for galaxy formation and evolution with the circumgalactic medium (CGM) model presented in Faerman et al. (2020) to explore the CGM properties of $L^{*}$ galaxies. We use the SAM to generate a sample of galaxies with halo masses similar to the Milky Way (MW) halo, $M_{\rm vir} \approx 10^{12}~{\rm M_{sun}}$, and find that the CGM mass and mean metallicity in the sample are correlated. We use the CGM masses and metallicities of the SAM galaxies as inputs for the FSM20 model, and vary the amount of non-thermal support. The density profiles in our models can be approximated by power-law functions with slopes in the range of $0.75 < a_n < 1.25$, with higher non-thermal pressure resulting in flatter distributions. We explore how the gas pressure, dispersion measure, OVI-OVIII column densities, and cooling rates behave with the gas distribution and total mass. We show that for CGM masses below $\sim 3 \times 10^{10}~{\rm M_{sun}}$, photoionization has a significant effect on the column densities of OVI and OVIII. The combination of different MW CGM observations favors models with similar fractions in thermal pressure, magnetic fields/cosmic rays, and turbulent support, and with $M_{\rm gas} \sim 3-10 \times 10^{10}~{\rm M_{sun}}$. The MW OVI column requires $t_{\rm cool}/t_{\rm dyn} \sim 4$, independent of the gas distribution. The AGN jet-driven heating rates in the SAM are enough to offset the CGM cooling, although exact balance is not required in star-forming galaxies. We provide predictions for the columns densities of additional metal ions - NV, NeVIII, and MgX.