Probing Super-virial Gas in the Milky Way CGM with X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) plays an integral role in our understanding of feedback within galaxies as the inflow and outflow of gas from the CGM drives and is enriched by star formation in the galaxy. Previous analysis has been done to show that the Milky Way CGM is multi-phase, predominantly consisting of a warm-hot component of ~10⁶ K. More recent discoveries reveal an extremely hot, super-virial phase of gas with a temperature of ~10⁷ K. We use absorption spectroscopy to analyze Chandra X-ray grating spectra along the line of sight of the quasar NGC3783 and detect Ne X absorption from the CGM, indicative of super-virial temperature and super-solar metal abundance. The analysis of this sightline allows us to characterize the ubiquity of the supervirial and chemically-enriched gas within the CGM. We aim to understand where this enrichment comes from, whether it is localized or uniform throughout the Milky Way CGM and what processes are causing the enrichment by adding new directional understanding to previously completed absorption spectroscopy analysis.