Abstract

We use cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations to study the cool, accreted gas in two Milky Way size galaxies through cosmic time to z = 0. We find that gas from mergers and cold flow accretion results in significant amounts of cool gas in galaxy halos. This cool circum-galactic component drops precipitously once the galaxies cross the critical mass to form stable shocks, M vir = M sh ~ 1012 M sun. Before reaching M sh, the galaxies experience cold mode accretion (T < 105 K) and show moderately high covering fractions in accreted gas: fc ~ 30%-50% for R < 50 comoving kpc and N_>10^ cm-2. These values are considerably lower than observed covering fractions, suggesting that outflowing gas (not included here) is important in simulating galaxies with realistic gaseous halos. Within ~500 Myr of crossing the M sh threshold, each galaxy transitions to hot mode gas accretion, and fc drops to ~5%. The sharp transition in covering fraction is primarily a function of halo mass, not redshift. This signature should be detectable in absorption system studies that target galaxies of varying host mass, and may provide a direct observational tracer of the transition from cold flow accretion to hot mode accretion in galaxies.