eDIG-CHANGES I: Extended H{\alpha} Emission from the Extraplanar Diffuse Ionized Gas (eDIG) around CHANG-ES Galaxies

TL;DR

This study analyzes the vertical distribution of ionized gas in 22 edge-on spiral galaxies, revealing correlations with star formation rates and comparisons with other galaxy halo components, suggesting energy equipartition among different phases.

Contribution

First detailed analysis of eDIG scale heights in a sample of 22 galaxies, establishing correlations with star formation and multi-wavelength properties, expanding understanding of galaxy halo gas.

Findings

Median eDIG scale height is 1.13 kpc.

Strong sublinear correlation between scale height and SFR.

eDIG is slightly more extended than neutral gas (HI).

Abstract

The extraplanar diffuse ionized gas (eDIG) represents the cool/warm ionized gas reservoir around galaxies. We present a spatial analysis of H$\alpha$ images of 22 nearby edge-on spiral galaxies from the CHANG-ES sample (the eDIG-CHANGES project), taken with the APO 3.5m telescope, in order to study their eDIG. We conduct an exponential fit to the vertical intensity profiles of the sample galaxies, of which 16 can be decomposed into a thin disk plus an extended thick disk component. The median value of the scale height (h) of the extended component is $1.13\pm 0.14$ kpc. We find a tight sublinear correlation between h and the SFR. Moreover, the offset of individual galaxies from the best-fit SFR-h relation shows significant anti-correlation with SFR_SD. This indicates that galaxies with more intense star formation tend to have disproportionately extended eDIG. Combined with data from the literature, we find that the correlations between the eDIG properties and the galaxies' properties extend to broader ranges. We further compare the vertical extension of the eDIG to multi-wavelength measurements of other CGM phases. We find the eDIG to be slightly more extended than the neutral gas (HI 21-cm line), indicating the existence of some extended ionizing sources. Most galaxies have an X-ray scale height smaller than the h, suggesting that the majority of the X-ray emission detected in shallow observations are actually from the thick disk. The h is comparable to the L-band radio continuum scale height, both slightly larger than that at higher frequencies (C-band), where the cooling is stronger and the thermal contribution may be larger. The comparable H$\alpha$ and L-band scale height indicates that the thermal and non-thermal electrons have similar spatial distributions. This further indicates that the thermal gas, the cosmics rays, and the magnetic field may be close to energy equipartition.