Reigniting the FUSE II: O VI Emission in Massive Elliptical Galaxies
Abstract
This is the second paper in a series where we examine archival far-ultraviolet spectroscopy of 29 massive elliptical galaxies from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) with modern methods. In the first paper, we performed SED modeling with aperture-matched photometry and analyzed the young and old stellar populations in these galaxies. In this paper, we report extinction-corrected O VI λλ1032,1038 mathringA fluxes and upper limits for each galaxy, which we use to infer the rate at which gas is cooling through 105.5 K via multiphase condensation of the galaxy's CGM (ṀO VI) under the assumption of steady radiative cooling. By considering both Galactic and intrinsic extinction, we overwhelmingly find ṀO VI to be larger than values found previously in the literature by a median of ∼ 80%. Additionally, we quantify correlations between ṀO VI and star formation rates, classical luminosity-based X-ray cooling rates, and X-ray spectroscopic cooling rates. The results suggest that the efficiency of cooling from the ≳ 107 K circumgalactic medium evolves with host mass, being suppressed by a factor of ∼ 4-$5$ more at the cluster scale than it is at the group and elliptical scales. In contrast, under the steady cooling assumption, cooling from 105.5 K to the molecular phase appears to be suppressed by an order of magnitude, independent of mass, requiring turbulent mixing layers, thermal conduction, multiphase recycling, a bottom-heavy initial mass function, or some other additional physics to explain.
Related
- Reigniting the FUSE I: Star Formation in Massive Elliptical Galaxies
- O VI Emission in Starbursting BCGs: An HST-COS Extension of "Reigniting the FUSE"
- Massive double-exponential galaxies with extended LSB emission: An IllustrisTNG exploration II -are they unique?
- An Orbital Interpretation of Decreasing Galaxy Velocity Distance Relations in Systems Dominated by Giant Elliptical Galaxies
- Energy deposited by black holes in the hot X-ray gas of elliptical galaxies, groups and clusters
BibTeX
@misc{reefe2026reigniting,
title = {{Reigniting the FUSE II: O VI Emission in Massive Elliptical Galaxies}},
author = {Michael Reefe and Michael McDonald and Greg L. Bryan and Megan Donahue and Andrew C. Fabian and Massimo Gaspari and Eric Miller and Valeria Olivares and G. Mark Voit},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.13368},
eprint = {2609.13368},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13368},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Reigniting the FUSE II: O VI Emission in Massive Elliptical Galaxies
AU - Michael Reefe
AU - Michael McDonald
AU - Greg L. Bryan
AU - Megan Donahue
AU - Andrew C. Fabian
AU - Massimo Gaspari
AU - Eric Miller
AU - Valeria Olivares
AU - G. Mark Voit
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.13368
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13368
AB - This is the second paper in a series where we examine archival far-ultraviolet spectroscopy of 29 massive elliptical galaxies from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) with modern methods. In the first paper, we performed SED modeling with aperture-matched photometry and analyzed the young and old stellar populations in these galaxies. In this paper, we report extinction-corrected O VI λλ1032,1038 mathringA fluxes and upper limits for each galaxy, which we use to infer the rate at which gas is cooling through 10^5.5 K via multiphase condensation of the galaxy's CGM (Ṁ_O VI) under the assumption of steady radiative cooling. By considering both Galactic and intrinsic extinction, we overwhelmingly find Ṁ_O VI to be larger than values found previously in the literature by a median of ∼ 80%. Additionally, we quantify correlations between Ṁ_O VI and star formation rates, classical luminosity-based X-ray cooling rates, and X-ray spectroscopic cooling rates. The results suggest that the efficiency of cooling from the ≳ 10^7 K circumgalactic medium evolves with host mass, being suppressed by a factor of ∼ 4-$5$ more at the cluster scale than it is at the group and elliptical scales. In contrast, under the steady cooling assumption, cooling from 10^5.5 K to the molecular phase appears to be suppressed by an order of magnitude, independent of mass, requiring turbulent mixing layers, thermal conduction, multiphase recycling, a bottom-heavy initial mass function, or some other additional physics to explain.
ER -