THE STRUCTURE OF THE CIRCUMGALACTIC MEDIUM OF GALAXIES: COOL ACCRETION INFLOW AROUND NGC 1097

We present Hubble Space Telescope far-UV spectra of four QSOs whose sightlines pass through the halo of NGC 1097 at impact parameters of rho = 48-165 kpc. NGC 1097 is a nearby spiral galaxy that has undergone at least two minor merger events, but no apparent major mergers, and is relatively isolated with respect to other nearby bright galaxies. This makes NGC 1097 a good case study for exploring baryons in a paradigmatic bright-galaxy halo. Ly alpha absorption is detected along all sightlines and Si III lambda 1206 is found along the three sightlines with the smallest.; metal lines of C II, Si II, and Si IV are only found with certainty toward the innermost sightline. The kinematics of the absorption lines are best replicated by a model with a disk-like distribution of gas approximately planar to the observed 21 cm H I disk, which is rotating more slowly than the inner disk, and into which gas is infalling from the intergalactic medium. Some part of the absorption toward the innermost sightline may arise either from a small-scale outflow or from tidal debris associated with the minor merger that gives rise to the well known dog-leg stellar stream that projects from NGC 1097. When compared to other studies, NGC 1097 appears to be a typical absorber, although the large dispersion in absorption line column density and equivalent width in a single halo goes perhaps some way toward explaining the wide range of these values seen in higher-z studies.