Work

Modelling the cool gas clumps in the circumgalactic medium

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT A major challenge in circumgalactic medium (CGM) studies is determining the three-dimensional (3D) properties from the observed projected observations. Here, we decompose the 3D gas density and spatial distribution of cool clouds by fitting a cool CGM model with the absorption observations, including the cool gas density, Ly$\alpha$, and Mg ii equivalent widths. The clumpiness in the cool CGM is considered by modelling individual clouds. This model has four major components: the radial profile of the cool gas density; the number density of clouds; the absorption properties within individual clouds; and the velocity dispersion in the CGM. The observed cool gas density exhibits a large dispersion of $\approx 2-3$ dex within the virial radius ($\rm{r_{\rm vir}}$). This dispersion can be reproduced with a combination of the projection effect (i.e. distant low-density clouds projected at small radii) and the intrinsic variation in the gas density. By modelling the probability density functions of gas density at different radii, the cool gas density is modelled as a $\beta$-model with a characteristic gas density of $\log n_{\rm H,0}/{\rm cm^{-3}}=-2.57_{-0.25}^{+0.43}$ at $\rm{r_{\rm vir}}$ and a slope of $\beta _c = 0.63_{-0.20}^{+0.16}$, and the intrinsic dispersion is $\sigma _{n_\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle {H}}}\approx 0.56_{-0.20}^{+0.19}$ dex. Assuming a cloud mass of $10^4~\rm{{M}_{\odot }}$, we further constrain the number density of cool clouds by jointly reproducing Ly$\alpha$ and Mg ii equivalent width samples, resulting into a number density of $\log n^{}_{{\scriptscriptstyle \mathcal {N}}_\mathrm{cl},0}/ \rm{r_{\rm vir}}^{-3} = 4.76^{+0.27}_{-0.21}$ at $\rm{r_{\rm vir}}$ and a slope of $\beta ^{}_{{\scriptscriptstyle \mathcal {N}}_\mathrm{cl}}= 0.65^{+0.06}_{-0.07}$. This spatial distribution of the cool CGM leads to a total cool gas mass of $\log M_{\rm cool}/\rm{{M}_{\odot }}= 10.01^{+0.06}_{-0.06}$ for $L^{*}$ galaxies, while varying the cloud mass from $10^3$ to $10^6~\rm{{M}_{\odot }}$ leads to the total cool CGM mass of $9.62_{-0.07}^{+0.05}$ to $10.46_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$.

Source: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf407

Authors: Hang Yang, Zhijie Qu, Joel N Bregman, Li Ji