A hot gaseous galaxy halo candidate with Mg X absorption
The hot gas in galaxy halos may account for a significant fraction of missing baryons in galaxies, and some of these gases can be traced by high ionization absorption systems in QSO UV spectra. Using high S/N Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph spectra, we discovered a high ionization state system at z = 1.1912 in the sightline toward LBQS 1435-0134, and two-component absorption lines are matched for Mg x, Ne viii, Ne vi, O vi, Ne v, O v, Ne iv, O iv, N iv, O iii, and H i. Mg x, detected for the first time (5.8σ), is a particularly direct tracer of hot galactic halos, as its peak ion fraction occurs near 10{sup 6.1} K, about the temperature of a virialized hot galaxy halo of mass ∼0.5M{sup ∗}. With Mg x and Ne viii, a photoionization model cannot reproduce the observed column densities with path lengths of galaxy halos. For collisional ionization models, one or two-temperature models do not produce acceptable fits, but a three-temperature model or a power-law model can produce the observed results. In the power-law model, dN/dT=10{sup 4.4±2.2−[Z/X]}T{sup 1.55±0.41} with temperatures in the range of 10{sup 4.39±0.13} K<T<10{sup 6.04±0.05} K, the total hydrogen column density is 8.2×10{sup 19}(0.3 Z{sub ⊙}/Z) cm{sup −2} and the positive power-law index indicates most of the mass is at the high temperature end. We suggest that this absorption system is a hot volume-filled galaxy halo rather than interaction layers between the hot halo and cool clouds. The temperature dependence of the column density is likely due to the local mixture of multiple phase gases.