Mapping galactic winds and small-scale structure in the circumgalactic medium with Habitable Worlds Observatory

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Abstract
For half a century now, the galaxy formation and evolution community has recognized the critical role of gas accretion to sustain star formation (e.g., Refs. 1, 2). Gas is thought to transition into galaxies through accretion processes and, in turn, get expelled from galaxies through feedback processes, an interplay that regulates galactic gas content. What is now broadly called “feedback” includes the ejection of both matter and energy from stellar winds, radiation, and supernovae as well as active galactic nuclei (AGN), and both theory and observation have implicated feedback as central to regulating, perhaps even halting (or quenching), star formation. The discovery of a ubiquitous circumgalactic medium (CGM; Fig. 1) from quasar absorption line studies supports this paradigm: (1) the dark matter halos in which galaxies reside contain a substantial baryonic component well beyond any stellar extent of a galaxy (a potential source of fuel for star formation)4; (2) the gaseous halos permeating their dark matter counterparts are correlated with their host galaxy star formation properties (connecting the CGM to central galaxy activity)5,6; (3) galaxy environment impacts the gas reservoirs of galaxies living in overdense environments such as groups and clusters (where quenched galaxies reside in great numbers)7; and (4) more than half of the metals in the universe reside outside galaxies, which implicates ejection from sites of star formation (galaxies) into the CGM.8
Funding Information
  • National Science Foundation (2327438)

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