Synchrotron Signatures of Cosmic Ray Transport Physics in Galaxies

Understand

Cosmic rays (CRs) may drive outflows and alter the phase structure of the circumgalactic medium, with potentially important implications on galaxy formation.

• However, these effects ultimately depend on the dominant mode of transport of CRs within and around galaxies, which remains highly uncertain.
• To explore potential observable constraints on CR transport, we investigate a set of cosmological FIRE-2 CR-MHD simulations of L$_{\ast}$ galaxies which evolve CRs with transport models motivated by self-confinement (SC) and extrinsic turbulence (ET) paradigms.
• To first order, the synchrotron properties diverge between SC and ET models due to a CR physics driven hysteresis.