An Empirical Determination of the Dependence of the Circumgalactic Mass Cooling Rate and Feedback Mass Loading Factor on Galactic Stellar Mass

Abstract

Using our measurements of the H$\alpha$ emission line flux originating in the cool (T $\sim 10^4$ K) gas that populates the halos of galaxies, we build a joint model to describe mass of the cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) as a function of galactic stellar mass ($10^{9.5}<({{\mathrm{M}}_{\ast }/M}_{\odot })<10^{11}$) and environment. Because the H$\alpha$ emission correlates with the main cooling channel for this gas, we are able to estimate the rate at which the CGM cools and becomes fuel for star formation in the central galaxy. We describe this calculation, which uses our observations, previous measurements of some critical CGM properties, and modeling of the cooling mechanism using the \cloudy modeling suite. We find that the mass cooling rate is larger than the star formation rates of the central galaxies by a factor of $\sim 4-90$, empirically confirming that there is sufficient fuel to resolve the gas consumption problem and that feedback is needed to avoid collecting too much cold gas in galaxies. We find excellent agreement between our estimates of both the mass cooling rates and mass loading factors and the predictions of independent theoretical studies. The convergence in results that we find from several completely different treatments of the problem, particularly at the lower end of the galactic mass range, is a strong indication that we have a relatively robust understanding of the quantitative effects of feedback across this mass range.

Submit for publication. 15 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (32)

• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• The hierarchical formation of the brightest cluster galaxies
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• The Circumgalactic Medium
• Galaxy Groups in the SDSS DR4: I. The Catalogue and Basic Properties
• The Role of Pressure in GMC Formation II: The H_2 - Pressure Relation
• The COS-Halos Survey: Physical Conditions and Baryonic Mass in the Low-Redshift Circumgalactic Medium
• COLD GASS, an IRAM Legacy Survey of Molecular Gas in Massive Galaxies: II. The non-universality of the Molecular Gas Depletion Timescale
• The COS-Halos Survey: Metallicities in the Low-Redshift Circumgalactic Medium
• The COS-Halos Survey: Origins of the Highly Ionized Circumgalactic Medium of Star-Forming Galaxies
• Resolving small-scale cold circumgalactic gas in TNG50
• On the possible environmental effect in distributing heavy elements beyond individual gaseous halos
• Characterizing mass, momentum, energy and metal outflow rates of multi-phase galactic winds in the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations
• The Gas Content and Stripping of Local Group Dwarf Galaxies
• Evolution of the Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium (CGM) of Massive Halos -- A Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) Survey of Ly$\alpha$ Emission around QSOs at $z\approx 2$
• Cooling flow solutions for the circumgalactic medium
• Elemental Abundances in Milky Way-like Galaxies from a Hierarchical Galaxy Formation Model
• The extent of chemically enriched gas around star-forming dwarf galaxies
• ELUCID IV: Galaxy Quenching and its Relation to Halo Mass, Environment, and Assembly Bias
• The influence of environment on satellite galaxies in the GAEA semi-analytic model
• The Rise of Active Galactic Nuclei in the GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly semi-analytic model
• Spatially Resolved Gas Kinematics within a Ly$\alpha$ Nebula: Evidence for Large-scale Rotation
• A Giant Intragroup Nebula Hosting a Damped Lya Absorber at z=0.313
• Circumgalactic Oxygen Absorption and Feedback
• On the Formation of Molecular Clumps in QSO Outflows
• Detection of missing baryons in galaxy groups with kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
• Circumgalactic Pressure Profiles Indicate Precipitation-Limited Atmospheres for $M_{\ast }\sim 10^9$$-$$10^{11.5}{M}_{\odot }$
• Hydrogen Emission from the Ionized Gaseous Halos of Low Redshift Galaxies
• A dynamics-free lower bound on the mass of our galaxy
• Average [O II] nebular emission associated with Mg II absorbers: Dependence on Fe II absorption
• The Origin of the Hot Gas in the Galactic Halo: Testing Galactic Fountain Models' X-ray Emission
• Observing the Effects of Galaxy Interactions on the Circumgalactic Medium

Cited by in corpus (4)

• [CII] halos in ALPINE galaxies: smoking-gun of galactic outflows?
• Cooling flows around cold clouds in the circumgalactic medium: steady-state models & comparison with TNG50
• The Anisotropic Circumgalactic Medium of Massive Early-Type Galaxies
• Constraining galactic baryon cycle using the galaxy stellar-to-halo mass relations