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Lighting Up the Circumgalactic Medium: Strong, Jet-aligned Hα Emission around Radio Galaxies

  • Authors: Namrata Roy, Sanchayeeta Borthakur, Timothy Heckman, Tanmay Singh

Namrata Roy et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1009 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 4.

Mg II absorption properties for individual radio-galaxy sight lines for the individually detected absorbers. Blue filled circles show absorbers along jet-aligned sight lines with θ ≤ 20, while orange open squares show absorbers at θ > 20. Left: Mg IIλ2796 rest-frame equivalent width as a function of normalized projected distance, R/Rradio. Center: apparent-optical-depth Mg IIλ2796 column density as a function of projected impact parameter, R. Right: fitted velocity dispersion (σ) determined from a two-component Gaussian profile fit to the Mg II λλ2796, 2803 absorption doublet, as a function of R/Rradio. Note that only confirmed Mg II detections are displayed across all panels. The jet-aligned and off-axis absorbers span similar ranges in equivalent width, column density, and line width, indicating that the Mg II-bearing cool clouds are not strongly enhanced or kinematically distinct along the radio-jet direction. This contrasts with the strongly jet-aligned Hα emission, suggesting that radio jets primarily brighten or ionize a subset of a more broadly distributed cool CGM reservoir.

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