Correlations between O VI Absorbers and Galaxies at Low Redshift

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between galaxies and metal-line absorption systems in a large-scale cosmological simulation with galaxy formation. Our detailed treatment of metal enrichment and non-equilibrium calculation of oxygen species allow us, for the first time, to carry out quantitative calculations of the cross-correlations between galaxies and O VI absorbers. We find the following: (1) The cross-correlation strength depends weakly on the absorption strength but strongly on the luminosity of the galaxy. (2) The correlation distance increases monotonically with luminosity from ~0.5-1h^-1 Mpc for 0.1L* galaxies to ~3-5h^-1 Mpc for L* galaxies. (3) The correlation distance has a complicated dependence on absorber strength, with a luminosity-dependent peak. (4) Only 15% of O VI absorbers lie near >=Lz* galaxies. The remaining 85%, then, must arise ``near'' lower-luminosity galaxies, though, the positions of those galaxies is not well-correlated with the absorbers. This may point to pollution of intergalactic gas predominantly by smaller galaxies. (5) There is a subtle trend that for >~0.5Lz* galaxies, there is a positive correlation between absorber strength and galaxy luminosity in the sense that stronger absorbers have a slightly higher probability of finding such a large galaxy at a given projection distance. For less luminous galaxies, there seems to be a negative correlation between luminosity and absorber strength.

uses emulateapj, 5 pages including 2 color figures and 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

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• Probing the IGM/Galaxy Connection V: On the Origin of Lya and OVI Absorption at z<0.2
• The Nature and Origin of Low-Redshift O VI Absorbers
• The Relationship Between Intergalactic HI/OVI and Nearby (z<0.017) Galaxies
• QSO Absorption Systems Detected in Ne VIII: High-Metallicity Clouds with a Large Effective Cross Section
• Studying the WHIM with Gamma Ray Bursts
• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and FUSE Observations of T ~ 10^5 K Gas In A Nearby Galaxy Filament
• The Dearth of Chemically Enriched Warm-Hot Circumgalactic Gas
• The Low-Redshift Lyman Alpha Forest toward 3C 273