We study the properties of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of high-$z$ galaxies in the metal enrichment simulations presented in Pallottini et al. 2014. At $z=4$, we find that the simulated CGM gas density profiles are self-similar, once scaled with the virial radius of the parent dark matter halo. We also find a simple analytical expression relating the neutral hydrogen equivalent width (${\rm EW}_{\rm HI}$) of CGM absorbers as a function of the line of sight impact parameter ($b$). We test our predictions against mock spectra extracted from the simulations, and show that the model reproduces the ${\rm EW}_{\rm HI}(b)$ profile extracted from the synthetic spectra analysis. When compared with available data, our CGM model nicely predicts the observed ${\rm EW}_{\rm HI}(b)$ in $z\lesssim2$ galaxies, and supports the idea that the CGM profile does not evolve with redshift.
Most studies of highly ionized plasmas have historically assumed ions are either in photoionization equilibrium, PIE, or collisional ionization equilibrium, CIE, sometimes including multiple phases with different relevant mechanisms. Simulation analysis packages, on the other hand, tend to use precomputed ion fraction tables which include both mechanisms, among others. Focusing on the low-density, high temperature phase space likely to be most relevant in the circumgalactic medium, in this work we show that most ions can be classified as 'PI' or 'CI' on an ion-by-ion basis. This means that for…
We examine the MgII absorbing circumgalactic medium (CGM) for the 182 intermediate redshift (0.072 < z < 1.120) galaxies in the "MgII Absorber-Galaxy Catalog" (MAGIICAT, Nielsen et al.). We parameterize the anti-correlation between equivalent width, Wr(2796), and impact parameter, D, with a log-linear fit, and show that a power law poorly describes the data. We find that higher luminosity galaxies have larger Wr(2796) at larger D (4.3 sigma). The covering fractions, f_c, decrease with increasing D and Wr(2796) detection threshold. Higher luminosity galaxies have larger f_c; no absorption is de…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM), which harbors > 50% of all the baryons in a galaxy, is both the reservoir of gas for subsequent star formation and the depository of chemically processed gas, energy, and angular momentum from feedback. As such, the CGM obviously plays a critical role in galaxy evolution. We discuss the opportunity to image this component using recombination line emission, beginning with the early results coming from recent statistical detection of this emission to the final goal of realizing spectral-line images of the CGM in individual nearby galaxies. Such work will happen i…
Ninety per cent of baryons are located outside galaxies, either in the circumgalactic or intergalactic medium. Theory points to galactic winds as the primary source of the enriched and massive circumgalactic medium. Winds from compact starbursts have been observed to flow to distances somewhat greater than ten kiloparsecs, but the circumgalactic medium typically extends beyond a hundred kiloparsecs. Here we report optical integral field observations of the massive but compact galaxy SDSS J211824.06+001729.4. The oxygen [O II] lines at wavelengths of 3726 and 3729 angstroms reveal an ionized ou…
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy evolution are increasingly able to produce realistic galaxies, but the largest hurdle remaining is in constructing subgrid models that accurately describe the behavior of stellar feedback. As an alternate way to test and calibrate such models, we propose to focus on the circumgalactic medium. To do so, we generate a suite of adaptive-mesh refinement (AMR) simulations for a Milky-Way-massed galaxy run to z=0, systematically varying the feedback implementation. We then post-process the simulation data to compute the absorbing column density for a…
Spurred by rich, multi-wavelength observations and enabled by new simulations, ranging from cosmological to sub-pc scales, the last decade has seen major theoretical progress in our understanding of the circumgalactic medium. We review key physical processes in the CGM. Our conclusions include: (1) The properties of the CGM depend on a competition between gravity-driven infall and gas cooling. When cooling is slow relative to free fall, the gas is hot (roughly virial temperature) whereas the gas is cold (T~10^4 K) when cooling is rapid. (2) Gas inflows and outflows play crucial roles, as does …
Single-phase photoionization equilibrium (PIE) models are often used to infer the underlying physical properties of galaxy halos probed in absorption with ions at different ionization potentials. To incorporate the effects of turbulence, we use the MAIHEM code to model an isotropic turbulent medium exposed to a redshift zero metagalactic UV background, while tracking the ionizations, recombinations, and species-by-species radiative cooling for a wide range of ions. By comparing observations and simulations over a wide range of turbulent velocities, densities, and metallicity with a Markov chai…
The eROSITA bubbles are detected via the instrument with the same name. The northern bubble shows noticeable asymmetric features, including distortion to the west and enhancement in the eastern edge, while the southern counterpart is significantly dimmer. Their origins are debated. Here, we performed hydrodynamic simulations showing that asymmetric eROSITA bubbles favor a dynamic, circumgalactic medium wind model, but disfavor other mechanisms such as a non-axisymmetric halo gas or a tilted nuclear outflow. The wind from the east by north direction in Galactic coordinates blows across the nort…
In this article we discuss the importance of high-resolution absorption spectroscopy for our understanding of the distribution and physical nature of the gaseous circumgalactic medium (CGM) that surrounds the Milky Way. Observational and theoretical studies indicate a high complexity of the gas kinematics and an extreme multi-phase nature of the CGM in low-redshift galaxies. High-precision absorption-line measurements of the Milky Way's gas environment thus are essential to explore fundamental parameters of circumgalactic gas in the local Universe, such as mass, chemical composition, and spati…
In massive objects, such as galaxy clusters, the turbulent velocity dispersion, $σ_\mathrm{turb}$, is tightly correlated to both the object mass, $M$, and the thermal energy. Here, we investigate whether these scaling laws extend to lower-mass objects in dark-matter filaments. We perform a cosmological zoom-in simulation of a filament using an adaptive filtering technique for the resolved velocity component and a subgrid-scale model to account for the unresolved component. We then compute the mean turbulent and thermal energies for all halos in the zoom-in region and compare different definiti…
Using spectroscopically selected galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey we present a detection of reddening due to dust in the circumgalactic medium of galaxies. We detect the mean change in the colors of "standard crayons" correlated with the presence of foreground galaxies at z ~0.05 as a function of angular separation. Following Peek & Graves (2010), we create standard crayons using passively evolving galaxies corrected for Milky Way reddening and color-redshift trends, leading to a sample with as little as 2% scatter in color. We devise methods to ameliorate possible systematic effects…
The standard model of cosmology, the LCDM model, robustly predicts the existence of a multitude of dark matter 'subhaloes' around galaxies like the Milky Way. A wide variety of observations have been proposed to look for the gravitational effects such subhaloes would induce in observable matter. Most of these approaches pertain to the stellar or cool gaseous phases of matter. Here we propose a new approach, which is to search for the perturbations that such dark subhaloes would source in the warm/hot circumgalactic medium (CGM) around normal galaxies. With a combination of analytic theory, car…
We assess the metal content of the cool (10^4 K) circumgalactic medium (CGM) about galaxies at z<1 using an H I-selected sample of 28 Lyman limit systems (LLS, defined here as absorbers with 16.2<log N(H I)<18.5) observed in absorption against background QSOs by the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on-board the Hubble Space Telescope. The N(H I) selection avoids metallicity biases inherent in many previous studies of the low-redshift CGM. We compare the column densities of weakly ionized metal species (e.g., O II, Si II, Mg II) to N(H I) in the strongest H I component of each absorber. We find that…
We introduce a series of 20 cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Lstar (M_200 =10^11.7 - 10^12.3 Msol) and group-sized (M_200 = 10^12.7 - 10^13.3 Msol) haloes run with the model used for the EAGLE project, which additionally includes a non-equilibrium ionization and cooling module that follows 136 ions. The simulations reproduce the observed correlation, revealed by COS-Halos at z~0.2, between O VI column density at impact parameters b < 150 kpc and the specific star formation rate (sSFR=SFR/Mstar) of the central galaxy at z~0.2. We find that the column density of circumgalactic O VI is …
The gas surrounding galaxies outside their disks or interstellar medium and inside their virial radii is known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM). In recent years this component of galaxies has assumed an important role in our understanding of galaxy evolution owing to rapid advances in observational access to this diffuse, nearly invisible material. Observations and simulations of this component of galaxies suggest that it is a multiphase medium characterized by rich dynamics and complex ionization states. The CGM is a source for a galaxy's star-forming fuel, the venue for galactic feedback a…
As cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons traverse the Universe, anisotropies can be induced via Thomson scattering (proportional to the integrated electron density; optical depth) and inverse Compton scattering (proportional to the integrated electron pressure; thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect). Measurements of anisotropy in optical depth $τ$ and Compton $y$ parameter are imprinted by the galaxies and galaxy clusters and are thus sensitive to the thermodynamic properties of circumgalactic medium and intergalactic medium. We use an analytic halo model to predict the power spectrum of the o…
There is an emerging consensus that large amounts of gas do not shock heat in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of massive galaxies, but instead pierce deep into haloes from the cosmic web via filaments. To better resolve this process numerically, we have developed a novel `shock refinement' scheme within the moving mesh code AREPO that adaptively improves resolution around shocks on-the-fly in galaxy formation simulations. We apply this to a massive $\sim10^{12}$ M$_\odot$ halo at $z=6$ using the successful FABLE model, increasing the mass resolution by a factor of 512. With better refinement t…
We analyse the properties of circumgalactic gas around simulated galaxies in the redshift range z >= 3, utilising a new sample of cosmological zoom simulations. These simulations are intended to be representative of the observed samples of Lyman-alpha emitters recently obtained with the MUSE instrument (halo masses ~10^10-10^11 solar masses). We show that supernova feedback has a significant impact on both the inflowing and outflowing circumgalactic medium by driving outflows, reducing diffuse inflow rates, and by increasing the neutral fraction of inflowing gas. By temporally stacking simulat…
The large temperature difference between cold gas clouds around galaxies and the hot halos that they are moving through suggests that thermal conduction could play an important role in the circumgalactic medium. However, thermal conduction in the presence of a magnetic field is highly anisotropic, being strongly suppressed in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. This is commonly modelled by using a simple prescription that assumes that thermal conduction is isotropic at a certain efficiency $f<1$, but its precise value is largely unconstrained. We investigate the efficiency…
We report the detection at 850um of the central source in SSA22-LAB1, the archetypal Lyman-alpha Blob (LAB), a 100kpc-scale radio-quiet emission-line nebula at z=3.1. The flux density of the source, $S_{850}=4.6\pm1.1$mJy implies the presence of a galaxy, or group of galaxies, with a total luminosity of $L_{\rm IR}\approx10^{12}L_\odot$. The position of an active source at the center of a ~50kpc-radius ring of linearly polarized Ly-alpha emission detected by Hayes et al. (2011) suggests that the central source is leaking Ly-alpha photons preferentially in the plane of the sky, which undergo sc…
Galaxies are surrounded by extended atmospheres, which are often called the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and are the least understood part of galactic ecosystems. The CGM serves as a reservoir of both diffuse, metal-poor gas accreted from the intergalactic medium, and metal-rich gas that is either ejected from galaxies by energetic feedback or stripped from infalling satellites. As such, the CGM is empirically multi-phased and complex in dynamics. Significant progress has been made in the past decade or so in observing the cosmic-ray/B-field, as well as various phases of the CGM. But basic ques…
We use a particle tracking analysis to study the origins of the circumgalactic medium (CGM), separating it into (1) accretion from the intergalactic medium (IGM), (2) wind from the central galaxy, and (3) gas ejected from other galaxies. Our sample consists of 21 FIRE-2 simulations, spanning the halo mass range log(Mh/Msun) ~ 10-12 , and we focus on z=0.25 and z=2. Owing to strong stellar feedback, only ~L* halos retain a baryon mass >~50% of their cosmic budget. Metals are more efficiently retained by halos, with a retention fraction >~50%. Across all masses and redshifts analyzed >~60% of th…
We propose the use of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect to probe the circumgalactic medium (CGM), with the aid of a spectroscopic survey covering the same area of a SZ survey. One can design an optimal estimator of the kSZ effect of the CGM with a matched filter, and construct the cross correlation between the estimator and the peculiar velocity recovered from the galaxy survey, which can be measured by stacking a number of galaxies. We investigate two compelling profiles for the CGM, the MB profile (Maller & Bullock 2004) and the $β$ profile, and estimate the detectability against t…
We describe a new approach to studying the intergalactic and circumgalactic medium in the local Universe: direct detection through narrow-band imaging of ultra-low surface brightness visible-wavelength line emission. We use the hydrodynamical cosmological simulation EAGLE to investigate the expected brightness of this emission at low redshift ($z$ $\lesssim$ 0.2). H$α$ emission in extended halos (analogous to the extended Ly$α$ halos/blobs detected around galaxies at high redshifts) has a surface brightness of $\gtrsim700$ photons cm$^{-2}$ sr$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$ out to $\sim$100 kpc. Mock observa…
The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is a powerful tool with the potential for constraining directly the properties of the hot gas that dominates dark matter halos because it measures pressure and thus thermal energy density. Studying this hot component of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is important because it is strongly impacted by star-formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity in galaxies, participating in the feedback loop that regulates star and black hole mass growth in galaxies. We study the tSZ effect across a wide halo mass range using three cosmological hydrodynamic…
We find significantly different diagnostic emission line ratios for the circumgalactic gas associated with galaxies of stellar masses above and below $10^{10.4}$ M$_\odot$ using SDSS spectroscopy. Specifically, in a sample of 17,393 galaxies, intersected by 18,535 lines of sight at projected radii between 10 and 50 kpc, we stack measured fluxes for nebular strong emission lines, [O {\small III}] $λ$5007, H$α$ and [N {\small II}] $\lambda6583$, and find that the gas surrounding the lower mass galaxies exhibits similar line ratios to those of gas ionized by star formation and that surrounding th…
Motivated by integral field units (IFUs) on large ground telescopes and proposals for ultraviolet-sensitive space telescopes to probe circumgalactic medium (CGM) emission, we survey the most promising emission lines and how such observations can inform our understanding of the CGM and its relation to galaxy formation. We tie our emission estimates to both HST/COS absorption measurements of ions around $z\approx 0.2$ Milky Way mass halos and models for the density and temperature of gas. We also provide formulas that simplify extending our estimates to other samples and physical scenarios. We f…
We estimate the detectability of X-ray metal-line emission from the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of galaxies over a large halo mass range ($\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{200c}} = 10^{11.5}$-$10^{14.5}\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$) using the EAGLE simulations. With the XRISM Resolve instrument, a few bright (K-$α$ or Fe L-shell) lines from $\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{200c}} \gtrsim 10^{13}\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ haloes should be detectable. Using the Athena X-IFU or the Lynx Main Array, emission lines (especially from O VIII and O VII) from the inner CGM of $\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{200c}} \gtrsim10^{12.5}\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$…
Using measurements of the [O III], H$α$ and [N II] emission line fluxes originating in the cool (T $\sim10^4$ K) gas that populates the halos of massive early-type galaxies with stellar mass greater than $10^{10.4}$ M$_\odot$, we explore the recent conjecture that active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity preferentially removes the circumgalactic medium (CGM) along the polar (minor-axis) direction. We find deficits in the mean emission line flux of [O III] and H$α$ (65 and 43%, respectively) along the polar vs. planar directions, although due to the large uncertainties in these difficult measurem…
The cycling of baryons in and out of galaxies is what ultimately drives galaxy formation and evolution. The circumgalactic medium (CGM) represents the interface between the interstellar medium and the cosmic web, hence its properties are directly shaped by the baryon cycle. Although traditionally the CGM is thought to consist of warm and hot gas, recent breakthroughs are presenting a new scenario according to which an important fraction of its mass may reside in the cold atomic and molecular phase. This would represent fuel that is readily available for star formation, with crucial implication…
Massive galaxies at high-z are known to co-evolve with their circumgalactic medium (CGM). If we want to truly understand the role of the CGM in the early evolution of galaxies and galaxy-clusters, we need to fully explore the multi-phase nature of the CGM. We present two novel science cases that utilize low-surface-brightness observations in the radio regime to better understand the CGM around distant galaxies. At the lowest temperatures, observations of widespread molecular gas are providing evidence for the cold baryon cycle that grows massive galaxies. At the highest temperatures, observati…
We use idealized 3D hydrodynamic simulations to study the dynamics and thermal structure of the circumgalactic medium (CGM). Our simulations quantify the role of cooling, stellar feedback driven galactic winds and cosmological gas accretion in setting the properties of the CGM in dark matter haloes ranging from $10^{11}$ to $10^{12}$ M$_\odot$. Our simulations support a conceptual picture in which the properties of the CGM, and the key physics governing it, change markedly near a critical halo mass of M$_{\rm crit} \approx 10^{11.5}$ M$_\odot$. As in calculations without stellar feedback, abov…
We report the serendipitous detection of a 0.2 L$^*$, Lyman-$α$ emitting galaxy at redshift 2.5 at an impact parameter of 50 kpc from a bright background QSO sightline. A high-resolution spectrum of the QSO reveals a partial Lyman-limit absorption system ($N_\mathrm{HI}=10^{16.94\pm0.10}$ cm$^{-2}$) with many associated metal absorption lines at the same redshift as the foreground galaxy. Using photoionization models that carefully treat measurement errors and marginalise over uncertainties in the shape and normalisation of the ionizing radiation spectrum, we derive the total hydrogen column d…
Hydrostatic equilibrium (HSE), where the thermal pressure gradient balances the force of gravity, is tested across a range of simulated EAGLE haloes from Milky Way L* haloes (M_200~10^12 Msol) to cluster scales. Clusters (M_200>=10^14 Msol) reproduce previous results with thermal pressure responsible for ~90% of the support against gravity, but this fraction drops for group-sized haloes (M_200~10^13 Msol) and is even lower (40-70%) for L* haloes between 0.1-0.3 R_200. Energy from feedback grows relative to the binding energy of a halo toward lower mass resulting in greater deviations from HSE.…
Using Suzaku data, we had found a $3.4σ$ evidence for the X-ray emitting warm-hot circumgalactic medium (CGM) in the L$^\star$ galaxy NGC 3221. Here we present XMM-Newton data and outline an efficient, rigorous and well-defined method to extract the faint CGM signal. We confirm the CGM detection at $4σ$ significance within 30-200 kpc of the galaxy. We claim with $99.62\%$ confidence that the CGM is extended beyond $150$ kpc. The average temperature of the CGM is 2.0$^{+0.2}_{-0.3} \times 10^6$ K, but it is not isothermal. We find suggestive evidence for a declining temperature gradient out to …
We present a deep XMM-Newton observation of the Galactic halo emission in the direction of the blazar 1ES 1553+113. In order to extract the Galactic halo component from the diffuse soft X-ray emission spectrum, accurately modeling the foreground components is crucial. Here we present complex modeling of the foregrounds with unprecedented details. A careful analysis of the spectrum yields two temperature components of the halo gas (T$^{em}_1$= 10$^{6.25-6.42}$K, T$^{em}_2$= 10$^{6.68-6.92}$K). We find that these temperatures obtained from the emission spectrum are not consistent with those from…
Observing the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in emission provides 3D maps of the spatial and kinematic extent of the gas that fuels galaxies and receives their feedback. We present mock emission-line maps of highly resolved CGM gas from the FOGGIE project (Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo) and link these maps back to physical and spatial properties of the gas. By increasing the spatial resolution alone, the total luminosity of the line emission increases by an order of magnitude. This increase arises in the abundance of dense small-scale structure resolved when the CGM gas is simulated to < 10…
We study the properties of magnetic fields in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of $z<1$ galaxies by correlating Faraday rotation measures of $\sim 1,000$ high-redshift radio sources with the foreground galaxy number density estimated from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. This method enables us to extract signals of rotation measures contributed by intervening gas around multiple galaxies. Our results show that there is no detectable correlation between the distribution of rotation measures and the number of foreground galaxies, contrary to several previous results. Utilizing the non-detection s…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of nearby star-forming galaxies shows clear indications of OVI absorption accompanied by little to no detectable NV absorption. This unusual spectral signature, accompanied by highly non-uniform absorption from lower ionization state species, indicates that the CGM must be viewed as a dynamic, multiphase medium, such as occurs in the presence of turbulence. Motivated by previous isotropic turbulent simulations, we carry out chemodynamical simulations of stratified media in a Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) gravitational potential with a total mass of $10^{12}$ solar m…
We investigate the relative importance of two galactic outflow suppression mechanisms : a) Cosmological infall of the intergalactic gas onto the galaxy, and b) the existence of a hot circumgalactic medium (CGM). Considering only radial motion, the infall reduces the speed of outflowing gas and even halts the outflow, depending on the mass and redshift of the galaxy. For star forming galaxies there exists an upper mass limit beyond which outflows are suppressed by the gravitational field of the galaxy. We find that infall can reduce this upper mass limit approximately by a factor of two (indepe…
We examine the kinematics of the gas in the environments of galaxies hosting quasars at $z\sim2$. We employ 148 projected quasar pairs to study the circumgalactic gas of the foreground quasars in absorption. The sample selects foreground quasars with precise redshift measurements, using emission-lines with precision $\lesssim300\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}$ and average offsets from the systemic redshift $\lesssim|100\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}|$. We stack the background quasar spectra at the foreground quasar's systemic redshift to study the mean absorption in \ion{C}{2}, \ion{C}{4}, and \ion{Mg}{2}. We find tha…
We study the distribution and kinematics of the cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) of emission line galaxies (ELGs) traced by metal absorption lines. Using about 200,000 ELGs from SDSS-IV eBOSS and half a million background quasars from SDSS, we measure the median absorption strength of MgII and FeII lines in quasar spectra for impact parameters ranging from 10 kpc to 1 Mpc. For comparison we measure the same quantity around luminous red galaxies (LRGs). On scales greater than 100 kpc both ELGs and LRGs exhibit similar absorption profiles. However, metal absorption is 5-10 times stronger around …
We consider a model of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in which feedback maintains a constant ratio of cooling time to freefall time throughout the halo, so that the entire CGM is marginally unstable to multiphase condensation. This 'precipitation model' is motivated by observations of multiphase gas in the cores of galaxy clusters and the halos of massive ellipticals. We derive from the model density and temperature profiles for the CGM around galaxies with masses similar to the Milky Way. After taking into consideration the geometrical position of our solar system in the Milky Way, we show t…
We measure differences in the emission line flux from the circumgalactic medium, CGM, of galaxies in different environments. Such differences could be a critical clue in explaining a range of galaxy properties that depend on environment. Using large samples of stacked archival spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we find that the H$α$ + [N {\small II}] emission line flux from the CGM within 50 kpc of $\sim$ L$^*$ galaxies is lower both for galaxies that lie within a projected distance of $\sim$ 500 kpc from a massive ($M_*>10^{11} M_\odot$) galaxy and for galaxies in richer/denser enviro…
Over the past decade, Lyman-alpha and metal line absorption observations have established the ubiquity of a gas-rich circumgalactic medium (CGM) around star-forming galaxies at z~0.2 potentially tracing half of the missing baryonic mass within galaxy halos. Unfortunately, these observations only provide a statistical measure of the gas in the CGM and do not constrain the spatial distribution and kinematics of the gas. Furthermore, we have limited sensitivity to Lyman-alpha at z~0 with existing instruments. As such, we remain ignorant of how this gas may flow from the CGM onto the disks of gala…
We introduce IGM-Vis, a novel astrophysics visualization and data analysis application for investigating galaxies and the gas that surrounds them in context with their larger scale environment, the Cosmic Web. Environment is an important factor in the evolution of galaxies from actively forming stars to quiescent states with little, if any, discernible star formation activity. The gaseous halos of galaxies (the circumgalactic medium, or CGM) play a critical role in their evolution, because the gas necessary to fuel star formation and any gas expelled from widely observed galactic winds must en…
As the signal-to-noise of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) cross-correlation measurements of galaxies improves our ability to infer properties about the circumgalactic medium (CGM), we will transition from being limited by statistical uncertainties to systematic uncertainties. Using thermodynamic profiles of the CGM created from the IllustrisTNG (The Next Generation) simulations we investigate the importance of specific choices in modeling the galaxy sample. These choices include different sample selections in the simulation (stellar versus halo mass, color selections) and different fitting models (matc…