Tracing the Cosmic Evolution of the Cool Circumgalactic Medium of Luminous Red Galaxies with DESI Year 1 Data
astro-ph.GA
Submitted: 2025-12-03
Updated: 2026-09-13
Comments: 31 pages, 18 figures, accepted by ApJ
Code: https://github.com/desihub/redrock
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We investigate the properties of the cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) of massive galaxies and their cosmic evolution.
Terminology
Abstract
We investigate the properties of the cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) of massive galaxies and their cosmic evolution. By using the year 1 dataset of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and QSOs from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey, we construct a sample of approximately 800,000 galaxy-quasar pairs and measure the radial distribution and kinematics of the cool gas traced by Mg II absorption lines as a function of galaxy properties from redshift 0.4 to redshift 1.2. Our results show that the covering fraction of the cool gas around LRGs increases with redshift, following a trend similar to the global evolution of galaxy star formation rate. At small radii (< 0.3rvir), the covering fraction anti-correlates with stellar mass, suggesting that mass-dependent processes suppress the cool gas content in the inner region. In addition, we measure the gas dispersion by modeling the velocity distribution of absorbers with a narrow and a broad components -- sigma n 160 and sigma b 380 km/s -- and quantify their relative contributions. The results show that the broad component becomes more prominent in the outer region, and its relative importance in the central region grows with increasing stellar mass. Finally, we discuss possible origins of the cool gas around massive galaxies, including the contribution of satellite galaxies and the precipitation scenario.
Sources
- Archetype-Based Redshift Estimation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Survey
- FOGGIE X: Characterizing the Small-Scale Structure of the CGM and its Imprint on Observables
- The Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
- Data Release 1 of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
- The DESI Experiment Part I: Science,Targeting, and Survey Design
- The DESI Experiment Part II: Instrument Design
- Validation of the Scientific Program for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
- Identifying Quasars from the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey
- DESI Mg II Absorbers: Extinction Characteristics & Quasar Redshift Accuracy
- A Comprehensive Characterization of Galaxy-cool CGM Connections at $z<0.4$ with DESI Year 1 Data
- The Multi-Phase Circumgalactic Medium of DESI Emission-Line Galaxies at z~1.5
- The DESI Experiment, a whitepaper for Snowmass 2013
- Survey Operations for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
- The abundance and origin of cool gas in galaxy clusters in the TNG-Cluster simulation
- Tracing the evolution of the cool gas in CGM and IGM environments through Mg II absorption from redshift z=0.75 to z=1.65 using DESI-Y1 data
- Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) with Heteroscedastic Uncertainties and Missing data
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