The Circumgalactic Medium

By Jason Tumlinson, Molly Peeples, Jessica Werk. 2017

714 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The gas surrounding galaxies outside their disks or interstellar medium and inside their virial radii is known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM). In recent years this component of galaxies has assumed an important role in our understanding of galaxy evolution owing to rapid advances in observational access to this diffuse, nearly invisible material. Observations and simulations of this component of galaxies suggest that it is a multiphase medium characterized by rich dynamics and complex ionization states. The CGM is a source for a galaxy's star-forming fuel, the venue for galactic feedback and recycling, and perhaps the key regulator of the galactic gas supply. We review our evolving knowledge of the CGM with emphasis on its mass, dynamical state, and coevolution with galaxies. Observations from all redshifts and from across the electromagnetic spectrum indicate that CGM gas has a key role in galaxy evolution. We summarize the state of this field and pose unanswered questions for future research.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2badc12527b9b03a987f90347bc5b5bcbf33510

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Citations in the corpus

Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo (FOGGIE). I. Resolving Simulated Circumgalactic Absorption at 2 ≤ z ≤ 2.5 (2018, background): “…galaxy evolution have met with mixed success in reproducing the observed column densities of low- or highionization circumgalactic gas, despite creating realistic-looking galaxies (Hummels et al. 2013; Ford et al. 2016; Oppenheimer et al. 2016; Suresh et al. 2017; see also Tumlinson et al. 2017).”
A Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst in the Direction of M81 (2021, methodology): “Finally, we estimate the free electron density using the relation ne= fe(ρb/mp) 23, where fe is the number ratio between free electrons and baryons in the halo (≈7/8; Tumlinson et al. 2017), and mp is the proton mass.”
Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “However, simply carrying the cool gas out of the galaxy and depositing it into the circumgalactic medium (CGM; Tumlinson et al. 2017) may not”
The milky way total mass profile as inferred from Gaia DR2 (2019, background): “Observationally, the total mass and density profile of the CGM in MW-mass galaxies are poorly determined and this is likely to remain so for years to come (e.g. Tumlinson et al. 2017).”