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A Metal-poor Damped Ly α System at Redshift 6.4
Name
Bañados_2019_ApJ_885_59.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
6.02 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0bd4afb7d04121cf5d6a0de22ecce940
Author(s)
Bañados, Eduardo
Rauch, Michael
Decarli, Roberto
Farina, Emanuele P
Hennawi, Joseph F
Mazzucchelli, Chiara
Venemans, Bram P
Walter, Fabian
Simcoe, Robert A
Prochaska, J Xavier
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We identify a strong Lyα damping wing profile in the spectrum of the quasar P183+05 at z = 6.4386. Given the detection of several narrow metal absorption lines at z = 6.40392, the most likely explanation for the absorption profile is that it is due to a damped Lyα system. However, in order to match the data a contribution of an intergalactic medium 5%-38% neutral or additional weaker absorbers near the quasar is also required. The absorption system presented here is the most distant damped Lyα system currently known. We estimate an H i column density of 1020.68±0.25 cm-2, metallicity [O/H] = -2.92 ± 0.32, and relative chemical abundances of a system consistent with a low-mass galaxy during the first Gyr of the universe. This object is among the most metal-poor damped Lyα systems known and, even though it is observed only ∼850 Myr after the big bang, its relative abundances do not show signatures of chemical enrichment by Population III stars.
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DOI of Published Version
10.3847/1538-4357/AB4129
