Gas around galaxy haloes - III: hydrogen absorption signatures around galaxies and QSOs in the Sherwood simulation suite

Abstract

Modern theories of galaxy formation predict that galaxies impact on their gaseous surroundings, playing the fundamental role of regulating the amount of gas converted into stars. While star-forming galaxies are believed to provide feedback through galactic winds, Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs) are believed instead to provide feedback through the heat generated by accretion onto a central supermassive black hole. A quantitative difference in the impact of feedback on the gaseous environments of star-forming galaxies and QSOs has not been established through direct observations. Using the Sherwood cosmological simulations, we demonstrate that measurements of neutral hydrogen in the vicinity of star-forming galaxies and QSOs during the era of peak galaxy formation show excess LyA absorption extending up to comoving radii of about 150 kpc for star-forming galaxies and 300 - 700 kpc for QSOs. Simulations including supernovae-driven winds with the wind velocity scaling like the escape velocity of the halo account for the absorption around star-forming galaxies but not QSOs.

11 pages, 10 figures; to appear in MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• A Superbubble Feedback Model for Galaxy Simulations
• Neutral hydrogen in galaxy halos at the peak of the cosmic star formation history
• The Impact of Galactic Feedback on the Circumgalactic Medium

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• Connection Between Galaxies and HI in the Circumgalactic and Intergalactic Media: Variation According to Galaxy Stellar Mass and Star-formation Activity
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