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=5.83−0.07+0.15 K, warm-hot virial temperature, and T2=6.61−0.06+0.12 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 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.
@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