In this paper, we review the extended halo material and the circumgalactic medium (CGM), including both dust and gas, and discuss promising science cases that could be realized using the KASI Deep Rolling Imaging Fast Telescope (K-DRIFT). Scattered starlight from cirrus clouds in our Galaxy poses one of the major challenges to studying the low surface brightness features of extragalactic sources. Therefore, it is essential to investigate how to discriminate extragalactic sources from cirrus cloud features. At the same time, interstellar dust clouds themselves are fundamental to understanding dust properties and the interstellar radiation field, both of which are essential for studies of chemical evolution and star formation in our Galaxy. Measuring the reddening of background sources, such as quasars, with K-DRIFT, which benefits from its broad field of view and accurate background subtraction, allows for the effective detection of extended dust in galactic halos, the CGM, and intracluster space. Observations of the Hα emission lines can be used to identify signatures of star formation activity within galaxies, as well as the environmental effects acting on them. Galactic winds driven by active galactic nuclei and starbursts can be traced through Hα emission. Strong ram pressure stripping effectively removes the interstellar medium (ISM) from galaxies. The stripped ISM becomes ionized or dissociated through mixing with the hot intracluster medium (ICM), forming Hα tails. The surface brightness of these Hα tails correlates not only with the presence of star formation in the tails but also the mixing stage of the stripped ISM and ICM. The Hα survey with K-DRIFT will enable the investigation of the evolutionary stages of ram pressure stripped galaxies in cluster environments, as well as the multiphase gas reservoir around galaxies and in the CGM.
Monte-Carlo radiative models of the diffuse Galactic light (DGL) in our Galaxy are calcu- lated using the dust radiative transfer code MoCafe, which is three-dimensional and takes full account of multiple scattering. The code is recently updated to use a fast voxel traversal algorithm, which has dramatically increased the computing speed. The radiative transfer models are calculated with the gen- erally accepted dust scale-height of 0.1 kpc. The stellar scale-heights are assumed to be 0.1 or 0.35 kpc, appropriate for far-ultraviolet (FUV) and optical wavelengths, respectively. The face-on optical depth, measured perpendicular to the Galactic plane, is also varied from 0.2 to 0.6, suitable to the optical to FUV wavelengths, respectively. We find that the DGL at high Galactic latitudes is mostly due to backward or large-angle scattering of starlight originating from the local stars within a radial distance of r < 0.5 kpc from the Earth. On the other hand, the DGL measured in the Galactic plane is mostly due to stars at a distance range that corresponds to an optical depth of ≈ 1 measured from the Earth. Therefore, the low-latitude DGL at the FUV wavelength band would be mostly caused by the stars located at a distance of r . 0.5 kpc and the optical DGL near the Galactic plane mainly originates from stars within a distance range of 1 . r . 2 kpc. We also calculate the radiative transfer models in a clumpy two-phase medium. The clumpy two-phase models provide lower intensities at high Galactic latitudes compared to the uniform density models, because of the lower effective optical depth in clumpy media. However, no significant difference in the intensity at the Galactic plane is found.