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arXiv · 2610.40609

From Dispersion to Metallicity: Probing the Milky Way Circumgalactic Medium with Fast Radio Bursts

Manami Roy·Sanskriti Das·Smita Mathur·Anjali Gupta·Yair Krongold
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Abstract

Circumgalactic Medium (CGM) plays a critical role in galactic evolution, serving as the primary reservoir for accretion and outflows. In this work, we present a novel statistical analysis to derive CGM metallicity from the dispersion measure (DM) of 25 Fast Radio Burst (FRB) sightlines. By combining metallicity-dependent oxygen absorption DM estimates with metallicity-independent FRB DMs, we directly constrain the metallicity of the hot phase of the Milky Way (MW) CGM. Considering different diffuse baryon fractions ($f_{\text{d}} = 0.0, 0.6, 0.8$) in the Intergalactic Medium (IGM) and intervening halos, the median metallicities of CGM are $Z_{\text{CGM}} = 0.12_{-0.04}^{+0.09} \, Z_{\odot}$, $0.26_{-0.12}^{+0.18} \, Z_{\odot}$, and $0.39_{-0.20}^{+0.26} \, Z_{\odot}$, respectively, by the bootstrapping method. Super-solar metallicity is seen in multiple sightlines for $f_d=0.8$, which is implausible for MW CGM metallicities. Even under conservative lower-bound estimates ($f_{\text{d}} = 0.0$), the inferred CGM metallicity significantly exceeds expectations for IGM accretion ($Z_{\text{IGM}} \lesssim 0.1 \, Z_{\odot}$), providing strong empirical evidence that a large fraction of the metal-enriched galactic feedback material is efficiently retained within the Milky Way CGM. Furthermore, we observe significant sightline-to-sightline variation in inferred metallicities, pointing toward a highly anisotropic multi-phase CGM shaped by complex interactions between feedback outflows and cosmic accretion.

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Manami Roy, Sanskriti Das, Smita Mathur, Anjali Gupta, Yair Krongold. 2026-10-29. From Dispersion to Metallicity: Probing the Milky Way Circumgalactic Medium with Fast Radio Bursts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40609

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