The Thermodynamic and Kinematic Evolution of Circumgalactic Gas around $z=1$ in the IllustrisTNG model

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Main Authors: DeFelippis, Daniel, Genel, Shy, Bryan, Greg L.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author DeFelippis, Daniel
Genel, Shy
Bryan, Greg L.
author_facet DeFelippis, Daniel
Genel, Shy
Bryan, Greg L.
contents The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is known to contain multiphase gas in various stages of evolution and interaction with the galaxy. In order to characterize its detailed behavior on short timescales, we use a subregion of the TNG100 cosmological simulation to study the evolution of the $z=1$ CGM around six galaxies in $10^{11.5}-10^{12}$ $M_{\odot}$ halos at a high time cadence of $\approx2$ Myr. We use Monte Carlo tracer particles to follow this CGM gas forward in time in a Lagrangian way and determine how its thermodynamic and kinematic properties change. We find that CGM gas mixes between different temperature and density phases quickly and within $\approx500$ Myr evolves into distinct cold ($T\approx10^4$ $\rm{K}$) and warm-hot ($T\approx10^{5.5}$ $\rm{K}$) phases at small and large distances from the galaxy, respectively, regardless of its initial ($z=1$) halo-centric radius. This is largely driven by feedback from the galaxy, which heats and ejects cold gas that had previously cooled and accreted toward and occasionally into the galaxy from the outer CGM. We see signatures of this process in autocorrelations of kinematic quantities, which take $\approx400$ Myr to fully decorrelate from their initial values, suggesting a timescale over which feedback disrupts and reprocesses CGM gas. We also examine gas in narrow temperature and density ranges associated with commonly observed ions and find that gas that is O VI-like stays in its phase for hundreds of Myr longer than gas that is Mg II-like or C IV-like, suggesting that CGM observations of different species could probe gas in different evolutionary states, even if the gas is cospatial.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24836
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Thermodynamic and Kinematic Evolution of Circumgalactic Gas around $z=1$ in the IllustrisTNG model
DeFelippis, Daniel
Genel, Shy
Bryan, Greg L.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) is known to contain multiphase gas in various stages of evolution and interaction with the galaxy. In order to characterize its detailed behavior on short timescales, we use a subregion of the TNG100 cosmological simulation to study the evolution of the $z=1$ CGM around six galaxies in $10^{11.5}-10^{12}$ $M_{\odot}$ halos at a high time cadence of $\approx2$ Myr. We use Monte Carlo tracer particles to follow this CGM gas forward in time in a Lagrangian way and determine how its thermodynamic and kinematic properties change. We find that CGM gas mixes between different temperature and density phases quickly and within $\approx500$ Myr evolves into distinct cold ($T\approx10^4$ $\rm{K}$) and warm-hot ($T\approx10^{5.5}$ $\rm{K}$) phases at small and large distances from the galaxy, respectively, regardless of its initial ($z=1$) halo-centric radius. This is largely driven by feedback from the galaxy, which heats and ejects cold gas that had previously cooled and accreted toward and occasionally into the galaxy from the outer CGM. We see signatures of this process in autocorrelations of kinematic quantities, which take $\approx400$ Myr to fully decorrelate from their initial values, suggesting a timescale over which feedback disrupts and reprocesses CGM gas. We also examine gas in narrow temperature and density ranges associated with commonly observed ions and find that gas that is O VI-like stays in its phase for hundreds of Myr longer than gas that is Mg II-like or C IV-like, suggesting that CGM observations of different species could probe gas in different evolutionary states, even if the gas is cospatial.
title The Thermodynamic and Kinematic Evolution of Circumgalactic Gas around $z=1$ in the IllustrisTNG model
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24836