Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2019
Volume 64, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, April 13–16, 2019; Denver, Colorado
Session E01: Poster Session I (5:45pm-7:45pm)
5:45 PM,
Saturday, April 13, 2019
Sheraton
Room: Plaza Foyer
Abstract: E01.00007 : Spectral Stacking to Probe the Baryonic Mass of the Milky Way Halo with Fe xiv Absorption*
Presenter:
Theodora E Zastrocky
(Notre Dame , Regis University)
Authors:
Theodora E Zastrocky
(Notre Dame , Regis University)
J. Christopher Howk
(Notre Dame)
Nicolas Lehner
(Notre Dame)
John M O'Meara
(Saint Michael's College, W. M. Keck Observatory)
The mass of stars and interstellar gas in galaxies is lower than expected if the halos around the galaxies have their universal share of baryons, including the Milky Way (MW). We produce a median flux stack using spectral stacking of QSOs from the KODIAQ survey to search for absorption from the Fe XIV 5302 transition from the coronal gas in the MW's halo. The ionization fraction of Fe XIV peaks at T ≈ 2x106 K in collisional ionization equilibrium, roughly the virial temperature of the MW, making Fe XIV a possibly good probe of coronal matter about the MW. We do not detect Fe XIV absorption. Our equivalent width and Fe XIV column density 3σ upper limits imply an upper limit on the MW halo mass of < 3x1014 M⦿ assuming a β-model gas density distribution. Our limits are 100-1000x larger than needed to be constraining. This indicates that using our stacking technique, a much larger spectra sample is needed to detect Fe XIV absorption. Future spectroscopy with ELTs designed to study the acceleration of the universe may be sufficient to detect this coronal matter in the MW halo, allowing us to study its dynamics at high resolution.
*TZ was supported by the Notre Dame NSF REU program. The KODIAQ data were supported through NSF grant AST-1517353 & NASA grants NNX10AE84G & NNX16AF52G.
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