Prof. Sowgat Muzahid

At any given epoch, more than 90% of the cosmic baryons reside outside of galaxies in a diffuse phase that is too tenuous to detect in emission. Absorption line spectroscopy is a proven technique to probe this otherwise invisible, diffuse gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and in the circumgalactic medium (CGM). UV/optical absorption line features of hydrogen (HI) and heavy elements (metals) arising from these media retain a record of how galaxies acquire, expel, and recycle their gas. This baryon cycle (gas accretion, galactic winds, and recycling of baryons) process is a crucial and yet poorly understood ingredient of galaxy evolution models. In this talk, I will present an overview of our two major CGM surveys (MUSEQuBES and MEGAFLOW) conducted using the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on VLT.