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Register a new userThe Metal-Strong Damped Lyman-alpha Systems
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Added by
St\\'ephane Herbert-Fort
Publication date
2006
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Stephane Herbert-Fort
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We have identified a metal-strong (logN(Zn+) > 13.15 or logN(Si+) > 15.95) DLA (MSDLA) population from an automated quasar (QSO) absorber search in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS-DR3) quasar sample, and find that MSDLAs comprise ~5% of the entire DLA population with z_abs > 2.2 found in QSO sightlines with r < 19.5. We have also acquired 27 Keck ESI follow-up spectra of metal-strong candidates to evaluate our automated technique and examine the MSDLA candidates at higher resolution. We demonstrate that the rest equivalent widths of strong ZnII 2026 and SiII 1808 lines in low-resolution SDSS spectra are accurate metal-strong indicators for higher-resolution spectra, and predict the observed equivalent widths and signal-to-noise ratios needed to detect certain extremely weak lines with high-resolution instruments. We investigate how the MSDLAs may affect previous studies concerning a dust-obscuration bias and the N(HI)-weighted cosmic mean metallicity <Z(z)>. Finally, we include a brief discussion of abundance ratios in our ESI sample and find that underlying mostly Type II supernovae enrichment are differential depletion effects due to dust (and in a few cases quite strong); we present here a handful of new Ti and Mn measurements, both of which are useful probes of depletion in DLAs. Future papers will present detailed examinations of particularly metal-strong DLAs from high-resolution KeckI/HIRES and VLT/UVES spectra.
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Utilizing the high-resolution, large-scale LAOZI cosmological simulations we investigate the nature of the metal-poor (${rm [Z/H]<-2}$) damped Lyman alpha systems (mpDLA) at $z=3$. The following physical picture of mpDLAs emerges. The majority of mpDLAs inhabit regions $ge 20$~kpc from the host galaxy center on infalling cold gas streams originating from the intergalactic medium, with infall velocity of $sim 100$ km/s and temperature of $sim 10^{4}$ K. For each host galaxy, on average, about $1%$ of the area within a radius $150$~kpc is covered by mpDLAs. The mpDLAs are relatively diffuse ($n_{rm{gas}} sim 10^{-2}$ cm$^{-3}$), Jeans quasi-stable, and have very low star formation rate ($dot{Sigma} le 10^{-4} M_{odot} rm{ yr}^{-1} rm{ kpc}^{-2}$). As mpDLAs migrate inward to the galaxy center, they mix with high metallicity gas and stellar outflows in the process, removing themselves from the metal-poor category and rendering the central ($le 5$ kpc) regions of galaxies devoid of mpDLAs. Thus, the central regions of the host galaxies are populated by mostly metal-rich DLAs instead of mpDLAs. All observables of the simulated mpDLAs are in excellent agreement with observations, except the gas density, which is about a factor of ten lower than the value inferred observationally. However, the observationally inferred value is based on simplified assumptions that are not borne out in the simulations.
We report evidence for a bimodality in damped Ly systems (DLAs). Using [C II] 158 mu cooling rates, lc, we find a distribution with peaks at lc=10^-27.4 and 10^-26.6 ergs s^-1 H^-1 separated by a trough at lc^crit ~= lc < 10^-27.0 ergs s^-1 H^-1. We divide the sample into low cool DLAs with lc < lc^crit and high cool DLAs with lc > lc^crit and find the Kolmogorv-Smirnov probabilities that velocity width, metallicity, dust-to-gas ratio, and Si II equivalent width in the two subsamples are drawn from the same parent population are small. All these quantities are significantly larger in the high cool population, while the H I column densities are indistinguishable in the two populations. We find that heating by X-ray and FUV background radiation is insufficient to balance the cooling rates of either population. Rather, the DLA gas is heated by local radiation fields. The rare appearance of faint, extended objects in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field rules out in situ star formation as the dominant star-formation mode for the high cool population, but is compatible with in situ star formation as the dominant mode for the low cool population. Star formation in the high cool DLAs likely arises in Lyman Break galaxies. We investigate whether these properties of DLAs are analogous to the bimodal properties of nearby galaxies. Using Si II equivalent width as a mass indicator, we construct bivariate distributions of metallicity, lc, and areal SFR versus the mass indicators. Tentative evidence is found for correlations and parallel sequences, which suggest similarities between DLAs and nearby galaxies. We suggest that the transition-mass model provides a plausible scenario for the bimodality we have found. As a result, the bimodality in current galaxies may have originated in DLAs.
This study focuses on some of the most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha absorbers known in the spectra of high redshift QSOs, using new and archival observations obtained with UV-sensitive echelle spectrographs on the Keck and VLT telescopes. The weakness and simple velocity structure of the absorption lines in these systems allows us to measure the abundances of several elements, and in particular those of C, N, and O, a group that is difficult to study in DLAs of more typical metallicities. We find that when the oxygen abundance is less than about 1/100 of solar, the C/O ratio in high redshift DLAs and sub-DLAs matches that of halo stars of similar metallicity and shows higher values than expected from galactic chemical evolution models based on conventional stellar yields. Furthermore, there are indications that at these low metallicities the N/O ratio may also be above simple expectations and may exhibit a minimum value, as proposed by Centurion and her collaborators in 2003. Both results can be interpreted as evidence for enhanced production of C and N by massive stars in the first few episodes of star formation, in our Galaxy and in the distant proto-galaxies seen as QSO absorbers. The higher stellar yields implied may have an origin in stellar rotation which promotes mixing in the stars interiors, as considered in some recent model calculations. We briefly discuss the relevance of these results to current ideas on the origin of metals in the intergalactic medium and the universality of the stellar initial mass function.
We have collected data for 69 Damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) systems, to investigate the chemical evolution of galaxies in the redshift interval 0.0 < z < 4.4. In doing that, we have adopted the most general approach used so far to correct for dust depletion. The best solution, obtained through chi^2 minimization, gives as output parameters the global DLA metallicity and the dust-to-metals ratio. Clear evolution of the metallicity vs. redshift is found (99.99% significance level), with average values going from ~1/30 solar at z~4.1 to ~3/5 solar at z~0.5. We also find that the majority of DLAs (~60%) shows dust depletion patterns which most closely resemble that of the warm halo clouds in the Milky Way, and have dust-to-metals ratios very close to warm halo clouds.
We present HIRES observations for 30 damped Lyman alpha systems, selected on the basis of their large metal column densities from previous, lower resolution data. The measured metal column densities for Fe, Zn, S, Si, Cr, Mn, and Ni are provided for these 30 systems. Combined with previously observed large metal column density damped Lyman alpha systems, we present a sample of 44 damped Lyman alpha systems observed with high resolution spectrographs (R~30000). These damped Lyman alpha systems probe the most chemically evolved systems at redshifts greater than 1.5. We discuss the context of our sample with the general damped Lyman alpha population, demonstrating that we are probing the top 10% of metal column densities with our sample. In a companion paper, we will present an analysis of the samples elemental abundances in the context of galactic chemical enrichment.
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