The Halo Gas of Local Spiral Galaxies and the Link to Gaseous Satellites
Abstract
Gaseous satellites orbiting massive host galaxies experience gas stripping and may contribute additional gas to the hosts' circumgalactic medium (CGM). We identify a sample of 21 local spiral galaxies (<15 Mpc) and characterize their gaseous satellite populations from existing HI surveys to investigate the connection between host galaxy CGM and satellite gas content. Most of our spiral hosts have ≤3 gaseous satellites in their halos with MHI≳107 M⊙. Using 26 HST/COS QSO sightlines at impact parameters of 0.1--0.9 R200c, we find that the CGM of z∼0 spiral galaxies show large intrinsic scatters (∼1−2 dex) in ion column densities and harbor a total cool gas mass of 2.5+7.5-1.9×109 (0.3Z⊙/Z') M⊙, largely consistent with their z∼0.2 counterparts (e.g., COS-Halos). Splitting our sample by the presence of gaseous satellites, we find that galaxy hosts with gaseous satellites have higher detection rates (up to 50\%) in metal ion absorbers, including OI, AlII, CII, SiII, SiIII, and SiIV, possibly because their CGM is more metal enriched or has more ionized gas in the cool phase. However, the CGM column densities show no significant correlation with either the number of gaseous satellites or their total HI masses, suggesting that the contribution from the gaseous satellites to the host CGM is likely small compared to the intrinsic scatters in the CGM profiles, and the profile trends are mainly influenced by sightlines' proximity to the hosts. The CGM detection rate becomes elevated when a sightline is within half the virial radius of a massive gaseous satellite (LMC-like or higher mass), likely due to stripped debris.
Related
- ARRAKIHS: The observability of tidally stripped satellites in a Milky Way-like halo
- CNN-Based Inference of Gaseous Halo Properties from Synthetic X-ray and 21-cm HI Observations
- A near-IR survey of luminous asymptotic giant branch stars in the satellites and stellar halo of M31
- ARRAKIHS: The observability of tidally stripped satellites in a Milky Way-like halo
- The Merian Survey: A Statistical Census of Bright Satellites of Sub-Milky Way-Mass Galaxies
BibTeX
@misc{zheng2026halo,
title = {{The Halo Gas of Local Spiral Galaxies and the Link to Gaseous Satellites}},
author = {Yong Zheng and Jingyao Zhu and Ben Wertz and Yakov Faerman and Mary E. Putman},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.00151},
eprint = {2609.00151},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.00151},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Halo Gas of Local Spiral Galaxies and the Link to Gaseous Satellites
AU - Yong Zheng
AU - Jingyao Zhu
AU - Ben Wertz
AU - Yakov Faerman
AU - Mary E. Putman
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.00151
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.00151
AB - Gaseous satellites orbiting massive host galaxies experience gas stripping and may contribute additional gas to the hosts' circumgalactic medium (CGM). We identify a sample of 21 local spiral galaxies (<15 Mpc) and characterize their gaseous satellite populations from existing HI surveys to investigate the connection between host galaxy CGM and satellite gas content. Most of our spiral hosts have ≤3 gaseous satellites in their halos with M_HI≳10^7 M_⊙. Using 26 HST/COS QSO sightlines at impact parameters of 0.1--0.9 R_200c, we find that the CGM of z∼0 spiral galaxies show large intrinsic scatters (∼1−2 dex) in ion column densities and harbor a total cool gas mass of 2.5^+7.5_-1.9×10^9 (0.3Z_⊙/Z') M_⊙, largely consistent with their z∼0.2 counterparts (e.g., COS-Halos). Splitting our sample by the presence of gaseous satellites, we find that galaxy hosts with gaseous satellites have higher detection rates (up to 50\%) in metal ion absorbers, including OI, AlII, CII, SiII, SiIII, and SiIV, possibly because their CGM is more metal enriched or has more ionized gas in the cool phase. However, the CGM column densities show no significant correlation with either the number of gaseous satellites or their total HI masses, suggesting that the contribution from the gaseous satellites to the host CGM is likely small compared to the intrinsic scatters in the CGM profiles, and the profile trends are mainly influenced by sightlines' proximity to the hosts. The CGM detection rate becomes elevated when a sightline is within half the virial radius of a massive gaseous satellite (LMC-like or higher mass), likely due to stripped debris.
ER -