Speaker
Ms
Monica Turner
(Leiden Observatory)
Description
We study the distribution of metals spanning a large range of ionization energies (from SiIII to OVI) in the circumgalactic medium, through a sample ~700 star-forming z~2.4 galaxies selected from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey. Using 15 hyper-luminous background quasars, we search for metals in absorption near galaxies, in order to make 2D metal maps by taking the median optical depth in bins out to 2 pMpc in impact parameter and 5 pMpc (1200 km/s) along the line-of-sight. We find an enhancement in the optical depths of all studied metals in the innermost impact parameter bin (<180 pkpc), and along the line-of-sight up to ~1 pMpc or 240 km/s (assuming pure Hubble flow and depending on the species). Normalizing the optical depth profiles, we do not see any significant difference between the distribution of hydrogen and the metals nor between the metals themselves.
