Gaseous halos and the interstellar disk-halo connection

Abstract

The presence of diffuse ionized gas (DIG) in the halos of spiral galaxies is discussed in the framework of the disk-halo interaction. The halo DIG is typically correlated with the presence of other components of the ISM in the halo including X-ray hot gas, cosmic rays, and magnetic fields. All these tracers of an extraplanar ISM correlate well with star formation in the disk thus corroborating the paradigm of an ISM driven by multiple and clustered supernovae.