The Accretion of Fuel at the Disk-Halo Interface

¹ Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, 550 West 120th St, New York, NY 10027, USA
² Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
³ University of Michigan, Dept. of Astronomy, 500 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Abstract

We discuss the support for the cooling of gas directly at the disk-halo interface as a mechanism to continually fuel a galaxy. This may be an important reservoir as there is not enough cold gas observed in galaxy halos and simulations indicate the existing cold clouds will be rapidly destroyed as they move through the surrounding halo medium. We show possible evidence for a net infall of the WIM layer in the Milky Way, simulation results showing the recooling of warm clouds at the disk-halo interface, and GALFA HI data of small, cold HI clouds that could represent this recooling.