English

Super-virial Hot Phase in Milky Way Circumgalactic Medium: Further Evidences

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-11-15 v1

Abstract

Recent discoveries of a super-virial hot phase of the Milky Way circumgalactic medium (CGM) has launched new questions regarding the multi-phase structure of the CGM around the Galaxy. We use 1.05 Ms of archival Chandra/HETG observations to characterize highly ionized metal absorption at z=0 along the line of sight of the quasar NGC 3783. We detect two distinct temperature phases with T1=5.830.07+0.15_1 = 5.83^{+0.15}_{-0.07} K, warm-hot virial temperature, and T2=6.610.06+0.12_2=6.61^{+0.12}_{-0.06} K, hot super-virial temperature. The super-virial hot phase coexisting with the warm-hot virial phase has been detected in absorption along only two other sightlines and in one stacking analysis. There is scatter in temperature of the hot as well as warm-hot gas. Similar to previous observations, we detect super-solar abundance ratios of metals in the hot phase, with a Ne/O ratio 2σ\sigma above solar mixtures. These new detections continue the mystery of the mechanism behind the super-virial hot phase, but provide evidence that this is a true property of the CGM rather than an isolated observation. The super-virial CGM could hold the key to understanding the physical and chemical history of the Milky Way.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.07660,
  title  = {Super-virial Hot Phase in Milky Way Circumgalactic Medium: Further Evidences},
  author = {Rebecca McClain and Smita Mathur and Sanskriti Das and Yair Krongold and Anjali Gupta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.07660},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

10 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS