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Modeling Mg II resonance doublet spectra from galaxy haloes at z $\sim$ 1

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-08-28 v1

Abstract

We investigate the properties of cold gas at 104 K10^4~\rm K around star-forming galaxies at z  1z~\sim~1 using Mg II spectra through radiative transfer modeling. We utilize a comprehensive dataset of 624 galaxies from the MAGG and MUDF programs. We focus on Mg II emission from galaxies and their outskirts to explore the cold gas within galaxies and the circumgalactic medium (CGM). We model Mg II spectra for 167 individual galaxies and stacked data for different stellar mass bins. The Mg II spectrum and surface brightness vary significantly with stellar mass. In low-mass galaxies (M/M<109M_*/M_\odot<10^9), Mg II emission is observed in both core (Rp<R_{\rm p}< 10 kpc) and halo regions (10 kpc <Rp<<R_{\rm p}< 30 kpc), while in higher mass galaxies (M/M>1010M_*/M_\odot>10^{10}), strong core absorption and more extended halo emission are prominent. This indicates that more massive galaxies have more cold gas. Radiative transfer modeling allows us to investigate key parameters such as the Mg II column density NMgIIN_{\rm MgII} and the outflow velocity vexpv_{\rm exp}. We identify a negative correlation between NMgIIN_{\rm MgII} and vexpv_{\rm exp}. Since higher stellar mass galaxies exhibit a higher NMgIIN_{\rm MgII} and lower vexpv_{\rm exp}, this suggests an abundance of slowly moving cold gas in massive galaxies. In addition, the fitting results of halo spectra indicate the presence of intrinsic Mg II absorption and strong anisotropy of the cold gas distribution around massive galaxies. This study is not only a proof-of-concept of modeling spatially varying Mg II spectra but also enhances our understanding of the CGM and provides insights into the mass-dependent properties of cold gas in and around galaxies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.08837,
  title  = {Modeling Mg II resonance doublet spectra from galaxy haloes at z $\sim$ 1},
  author = {Seok-Jun Chang and Rajeshwari Dutta and Max Gronke and Michele Fumagalli and Fabrizio Arrigoni Battaia and Matteo Fossati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.08837},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRAS, Comments welcome