The hidden circumgalactic medium
Abstract
The cycling of baryons in and out of galaxies is what ultimately drives galaxy formation and evolution. The circumgalactic medium (CGM) represents the interface between the interstellar medium and the cosmic web, hence its properties are directly shaped by the baryon cycle. Although traditionally the CGM is thought to consist of warm and hot gas, recent breakthroughs are presenting a new scenario according to which an important fraction of its mass may reside in the cold atomic and molecular phase. This would represent fuel that is readily available for star formation, with crucial implications for feeding and feedback processes in galaxies. However, such cold CGM, especially in local galaxies where its projected size on sky is expected to be of several arcminutes, cannot be imaged by ALMA due to interferometric spatial scale filtering of large-scale structures. We show that the only way to probe the multiphase CGM including its coldest component is through a large (e.g. 50-m) single dish (sub-)mm telescope.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.04531,
title = {The hidden circumgalactic medium},
author = {Claudia Cicone and Carlos De Breuck and Chian-Chou Chen and Eelco van Kampen and Desika Narayanan and Tony Mroczkowski and Paola Andreani and Pamela Klaassen and Axel Weiss and Kotaro Kohno and Jens Kauffmann and Jeff Wagg and Dominik Riechers and Bitten Gullberg and James Geach and Sijing Shen and J. Colin Hill and Simcha Brownson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.04531},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey