Comparison of Models for the Warm-Hot Circumgalactic Medium around Milky Way-like Galaxies

TL;DR

This paper systematically compares four analytic models of the Milky Way-like circumgalactic medium, analyzing their thermodynamic profiles and observational predictions to understand their differences and implications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of four CGM models, highlighting their differences in thermodynamic profiles and observational signatures for Milky Way-like galaxies.

Findings

Models differ most at small and large radii.

Entropy profile slopes vary between models.

Predictions for SZ, X-ray, and ion absorption differ across models.

Abstract

A systematic comparison of the models of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and their observables is crucial to understanding the predictive power of the models and constraining physical processes that affect the thermodynamics of CGM. This paper compares four analytic CGM models: precipitation, isentropic, cooling flow, and baryon pasting models for the hot, volume-filling CGM phase, all assuming hydrostatic or quasi-hydrostatic equilibrium. We show that for fiducial parameters of the CGM of a Milky-Way (MW) like galaxy ($\rm M_{vir} \sim 10^{12}~M_{\odot}$ at $z\sim 0$), the thermodynamic profiles -- entropy, density, temperature, and pressure -- show most significant differences between different models at small ($r\lesssim 30$ kpc) and large scales ($r\gtrsim 100$ kpc) while converging at intermediate scales. The slope of the entropy profile, which is one of the most important differentiators between models, is $\approx 0.8$ for the precipitation and cooling flow models, while it is $\approx0.6$ and 0 for the baryon pasting and isentropic models, respectively. We make predictions for various observational quantities for an MW mass halo for the different models, including the projected Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect, soft X-ray emission (0.5--2 keV), dispersion measure, and column densities of oxygen ions (OVI, OVII, and OVIII) observable in absorption.