CIERA REU Project

Introduction

My REU summer research project (Northwestern University, 2026) was to generate Hα and [OIII] emission maps and surface brightness profiles from FIRE-2 simulations, to be compared to future MOTHRA observations. I am focused on innner CGM virialization (ICV), which is theoretically connected to central galaxy properties. The pre-ICV state is predicted to correlate with irregular dwarfs and the post-ICV state is predicted to correlate with thin disk galaxies. Our pre-ICV and post-ICV surface brightness profiles and maps can then be compared to MOTHRA observations to test predictions on how ICV correlates with central galaxy properties.

Results

We use Michael Grudić’s meshoid to project the Hα and [OIII] surface brightness and get the surface brightness profiles from this projection. We find that the pre-ICV and post-ICV surface brightness profiles have very different shapes, with the pre-ICV profiles typically having a smooth, gradual decline as you go out from the center to the virial radius. However, the post-ICV profiles have a sudden “cliff” where the surface brightness drops. We characterize this by calculating the slope between 0.075x the virial radius out to where the surface brightnesss would be undetectable by MOTHRA. We find that the post-ICV profiles are about 1.6x the slope of the pre-ICV profiles. By targeting both pre-ICV and post-ICV galaxies with the MOTHRA telescope we can test our predictions that ICV correlates with central galaxy evolution by comparing our predicted pre-ICV and post-ICV to the MOTHRA observations.

Presentations

The end of the program CIERA REU poster is shown below.