Detection of Low Metallicity Warm Plasma in a Galaxy Overdensity Environment at z ~ 0.2

Abstract

We present results from the analysis of a multiphase O VI - broad Ly-alpha absorber at z = 0.19236 in the HST/COS spectrum of PG 1121+422. The low and intermediate ionization metal lines in this absorber have a single narrow component, whereas the Ly-alpha has a possible broad component with b(HI) $\sim 71$ km/s. Ionization models favor the low and intermediate ions coming from a $T\sim 8,500$ K, moderately dense photoionized gas with near solar metallicities. The weak O VI requires a separate gas phase that is collisionally ionized. The O VI coupled with BLA suggests $T\sim 3.2\times 10^5$ K, with significantly lower metal abundance and $\sim 1.8$ orders of magnitude higher total hydrogen column density compared to the photoionized phase. SDSS shows 12 luminous ($>L^{\ast }$) galaxies in the $\rho \le 5$ Mpc, $|\Delta v|\le 800$ km/s region surrounding the absorber, with the absorber outside the virial bounds of the nearest galaxy. The warm phase of this absorber is consistent with being transition temperature plasma either at the interface regions between the hot intragroup gas and cooler photoionized clouds within the group, or associated with high velocity gas in the halo of a $\lesssim L^{\ast }$ galaxy. The absorber highlights the advantage of O VI-BLA absorbers as ionization model independent probes of warm baryon reserves.

arXiv commentMNRAS Accepted, 16 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (92)

• The chemical composition of the Sun
• Radiative transfer in a clumpy universe: IV. New synthesis models of the cosmic UV/X-ray background
• The Cosmic Baryon Budget
• A Cosmology Calculator for the World Wide Web
• Where are the Baryons?
• The Large, Oxygen-Rich Halos of Star-Forming Galaxies Are A Major Reservoir of Galactic Metals
• The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
• Highly-Ionized High-Velocity Gas in the Vicinity of the Galaxy
• The 1% Concordance Hubble Constant
• Where Are the Baryons? II: Feedback Effects
• The Opacity of the Lyman Alpha Forest and Implications for Omega_{baryon} and the Ionizing Background
• Time-Dependent Ionization in Radiatively Cooling Gas
• The radial and azimuthal profiles of Mg II absorption around 0.5 < z < 0.9 zCOSMOS galaxies of different colors, masses and environments
• The Search for the Missing Baryons at Low Redshift
• The COS-Halos Survey: Metallicities in the Low-Redshift Circumgalactic Medium
• A High-Resolution Survey of Low-Redshift QSO Absorption Lines: Statistics and Physical Conditions of O VI Absorbers
• The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey: Evolution of the galaxy luminosity function up to z=2 in first epoch data
• Analytical approximations of K-corrections in optical and near-infrared bands
• Intervening O VI Quasar Absorption Systems at Low Redshift: A Significant Baryon Reservoir
• The baryon content of the Universe
• Mg II Absorption Systems in SDSS QSO Spectra
• SDSSJ150634.27+013331.6: the second compact elliptical galaxy in the NGC5846 group
• A Lower Bound on the Cosmic Baryon Density
• An HST/COS Survey of the Low-Redshift IGM. I. Survey, Methodology, & Overall Results
• The JHU-SDSS metal absorption line catalog: redshift evolution and properties of Mg II absorbers
• Tracing Inflows and Outflows with Absorption Lines in Circumgalactic Gas
• The Population of Weak Mg II Absorbers I. A Survey of 26 QSO HIRES/Keck Spectra
• The Hidden Mass and Large Spatial Extent of a Poststarburst Galaxy Outflow
• Halo Gas Cross Sections And Covering Fractions of MgII Absorption Selected Galaxies
• The Gaseous Extent of Galaxies and the Origin of \lya Absorption Systems. III. Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of \lya-Absorbing Galaxies at z < 1
• The Gaseous Extent of Galaxies and the Origin of Lya Absorption Systems. V. Optical and Near-Infrared Photometry of Lya-absorbing Galaxies at z < 1
• On the Incidence and Kinematics of Strong Mg II Absorbers
• Highly Ionized Gas Surrounding High Velocity Cloud Complex C
• HST-COS Observations of AGN. II. Extended Survey of Ultraviolet Composite Spectra from 159 Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Nature and Origin of Low-Redshift O VI Absorbers
• The intergalactic medium over the last 10 billion years II: Metal-line absorption and physical conditions
• The Population of Weak MgII Absorbers. II The Properties of Single-Cloud Systems
• The Nature of the Warm/Hot Intergalactic Medium I. Numerical Methods, Convergence, and OVI Absorption
• The Relationship Between Intergalactic HI/OVI and Nearby (z<0.017) Galaxies
• What Determines the Incidence and Extent of MgII Absorbing Gas Around Galaxies?
• The Properties of Low Redshift Intergalactic O VI Absorbers Determined from High S/N Observations of 14 QSOs with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
• The Photon Underproduction Crisis
• Detection of Ne VIII in the Low-Redshift Warm-Hot IGM
• Flickering AGN can explain the strong circumgalactic O VI observed by COS-Halos
• Properties of O VI Absorption in the Local Interstellar Medium
• Multiphase Gas In Galaxy Halos: The OVI Lyman-limit System toward J1009+0713
• Shock-Heated Gas in the Large Scale Structure of the Universe
• Halo Gas and Galaxy Disk Kinematics of a Volume-Limited Sample of MgII Absorption-Selected Galaxies at z~0.1
• On the OVI Abundance in the Circumgalactic Medium of Low-Redshift Galaxies
• On the HI content, dust-to-gas ratio and nature of MgII absorbers
• A Hubble Space Telescope Study of Lyman Limit Systems: Census and Evolution
• Baryon Cycling in the Low-Redshift Circumgalactic Medium: A Comparison of Simulations to the COS-Halos Survey
• Photon underproduction crisis: Are QSOs sufficient to resolve it?
• QSO Absorption Systems Detected in Ne VIII: High-Metallicity Clouds with a Large Effective Cross Section
• The Metagalactic Ionizing Background: A Crisis in UV Photon Production or Incorrect Galaxy Escape Fractions?
• Implications of the large OVI columns around low-redshift $L_{\ast }$ galaxies
• Characterizing Transition Temperature Gas in the Galactic Corona
• The Heavy Element Enrichment of Lyman alpha Clouds in the Virgo Supercluster
• Absorption-Line Detections of $10^{5-6}$ K Gas in Spiral-Rich Groups of Galaxies
• Absorption signatures of warm-hot gas at low redshift: OVI
• Star formation history, dust attenuation and extragalactic background light
• Intergalactic Lyman continuum photon budget in the past 5 billion years
• Probing the intra-group medium of a z = 0.28 galaxy group
• O VI Absorbers Tracing Hot Gas Associated with a Pair of Galaxies at z = 0.167
• A Multiphase Absorber Containing O VI and Broad H I Directly Tracing 10^6 K Plasma at Low-Redshift Toward HE 0153-4520
• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Detection of Ne VIII Tracing Warm - Hot Gas Towards PKS 0405-123
• Towards the statistical detection of the warm-hot intergalactic medium in inter-cluster filaments of the cosmic web
• Diagnosing galactic feedback with the line broadening in the low redshift Lyman-alpha forest
• Missing baryons traced by the galaxy luminosity density in the large-scale WHIM filaments
• Cos observations of metal line and broad lyman alpha absorption in the multi-phase o vi and ne viii system toward he 02226-4110
• The Multi-phase Absorption Systems Toward PG 1206+459
• Low redshift AGN in the Hamburg/ESO Survey: I. The local AGN luminosity function
• The Chemical and Ionization Conditions in Weak Mg II Absorbers
• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and FUSE Observations of T ~ 10^5 K Gas In A Nearby Galaxy Filament
• Detection of Ne VIII in an Intervening Multi-Phase Absorption System Towards 3C 263
• The Low-Redshift Lyman Alpha Forest toward PKS 0405-123
• A Quadruple-Phase Strong Mg II Absorber at z~0.9902 Toward PG 1634+706
• Models of Five Absorption Line Systems Along the Line of Sight Toward PG0117+213
• Metals in the circumgalactic medium are out of ionization equilibrium due to fluctuating active galactic nuclei
• The formation and physical origin of highly ionized cooling gas
• Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Observations of Warm Intervening Gas Towards 3C263
• A Survey of Analogs to Weak MgII Absorbers in the Present
• HST/COS detection of a Ne VIII absorber towards PG 1407+265: An unambiguous tracer of collisionally ionized hot gas?
• A Pair of O VI and Broad Ly-alpha Absorbers Probing Warm Gas in a Galaxy Group Environment at z ~ 0.4
• Measurement of Noisy Absorption Lines using the Apparent Optical Depth Technique
• Implications of an updated ultraviolet background for the ionization mechanisms of intervening Ne VIII absorbers
• The Warm Circum-Galactic Medium: 10^5-6 K Gas Associated with a Single Galaxy Halo or with an Entire Group of Galaxies?
• Detection of Two Intervening Ne VIII Absorbers Probing Warm Gas at z~0.6
• A survey of weak MgII absorbers at redshift <z>=1.78
• Super-Solar Metallicity in Weak Mg II Absorption Systems at z ~ 1.7
• A hot gaseous galaxy halo candidate with Mg X absorption
• The Properties of Two Low Redshift O VI Absorbers and Their Associated Galaxies Toward 3C 263

Cited by in corpus (5)

• New synthesis models of consistent extragalactic background light over cosmic time
• The Relation Between Galaxy ISM and Circumgalactic OVI Gas Kinematics Derived from Observations and $\Lambda$CDM Simulations
• Physical Conditions of Five O VI Absorption Systems Towards PG $1522+101$
• Detection of a Multiphase Intragroup Medium: Results from the COS-IGrM Survey
• Pair Lines of Sight Observations of Multiphase Gas Bearing O VI in a Galaxy Environment