Heavy Element Absorption Systems at 5.0
Name
Cooper_2019_ApJ_882_77.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
39.8 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a7c2c6863f333ae9a3c5022f1b4e9d78
Author(s)
Cooper, Thomas J
Simcoe, Robert A
Cooksey, Kathy L
Bordoloi, Rongmon
Miller, Daniel R
Furesz, Gabor
Turner, Monica L
Bañados, Eduardo
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. Ratios of different ions of the same element encode ionization information independently from relative abundances in quasar absorption line systems, crucial for understanding the multiphase nature and origin of absorbing gas, particularly at z > 6 where H i cannot be observed. Observational considerations have limited such studies to a small number of sightlines, with most surveys at z > 6 focused upon the statistical properties of individual ions such as Mg ii or C iv. Here we compare high- and low-ionization absorption within 69 intervening systems at z > 5, including 16 systems at z > 6, from Magellan/FIRE spectra of 47 quasars together with a Keck/High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) spectrum of the "ultraluminous" z = 6.3 quasar SDSSJ010013.02+280225.8. The highest redshift absorbers increasingly exhibit low-ionization species alone, consistent with previous single-ion surveys that show the frequency of Mg ii is unchanging with redshift, while C iv absorption drops markedly toward z = 6. We detect no C iv or Si iv in half of all metal-line absorbers at z > 5.7, with stacks not revealing any slightly weaker C iv just below our detection threshold, and most of the other half have NC II > NC IV. In contrast, only 20% of absorbers at 5.0-5.7 lack high-ionization gas, and a search of 25 HIRES sightlines at z ∼ 3 yielded zero such examples. We infer that these low-ionization high-redshift absorption systems may be analogous to metal-poor damped Lyμ systems (∼1% of the absorber population at z ∼ 3), based on incidence rates and absolute and relative column densities. Simple photoionization models suggest that circumgalactic matter at redshift six has systematically lower chemical abundances and experiences a softer ionizing background relative to redshift three.
MIT Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AB3402
