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Register a new userDiscovery of a giant and luminous Lya+CIV+HeII nebula at z=3.326 with extreme emission line ratios
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We present the discovery of HLock01-LAB, a luminous and large Lya nebula at z=3.326. Medium-band imaging and long-slit spectroscopic observations with the Gran Telescopio Canarias reveal extended emission in the Lya 1215AA, CIV1550AA, and HeII 1640AA lines over ~100kpc, and a total luminosity L(Lya)=(6.4+/-0.1)x10^44 erg s^-1. HLock01-LAB presents an elongated morphology aligned with two faint radio sources contained within the central ~8kpc of the nebula. The radio structures are consistent to be faint radio jets or lobes of a central galaxy, whose spectrum shows nebular emission characteristic of a type-II active galactic nucleus (AGN). The continuum emission of the AGN at short wavelengths is, however, likely dominated by stellar emission of the host galaxy, for which we derive a stellar mass M* = 2.3x10^11 Msun. The detection of extended emission in CIV and CIII] indicates that the gas within the nebula is not primordial. Feedback may have enriched the halo at at least 50 kpc from the nuclear region. Using rest-frame UV emission-line diagnostics, we find that the gas in the nebula is likely heated by the AGN. Nevertheless, at the center of the nebula we find extreme emission line ratios of Lya/CIV~60 and Lya/HeII~80, one of the highest values measured to date, and well above the standard values of photoionization models (Lya/HeII~30 for case B photoionization). Our data suggest that jet-induced shocks are likely responsible for the increase of the electron temperature and, thus, the observed Lya enhancement in the center of the nebula. This scenario is further supported by the presence of radio structures and perturbed kinematics in this region. The large Lya luminosity in HLock01-LAB is likely due to a combination of AGN photoionization and jet-induced shocks, highlighting the diversity of sources of energy powering Lya nebulae. [abridged]
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This paper reports the discovery of spatially-extended line-emitting nebula, reaching to ~100 physical kpc (pkpc) from a damped Ly{alpha} absorber (DLA) at z_DLA=0.313 along the sightline toward QSO PKS1127-145 (z_QSO=1.188). This DLA was known to be associated with a galaxy group of dynamical mass M_group ~3e12 M_sun, but its physical origin remained ambiguous. New wide-field integral field observations revealed a giant nebula detected in [OII], H{beta}, [OIII], H{alpha}, and [NII] emission, with the line-emitting gas following closely the motions of group galaxies. One of the denser streams passes directly in front of the QSO with kinematics consistent with the absorption profiles recorded in the QSO echelle spectra. The emission morphology, kinematics, and line ratios of the nebula suggest that shocks and turbulent mixing layers, produced as a result of stripped gaseous streams moving at supersonic speed across the ambient hot medium, contribute significantly to the ionization of the gas. While the DLA may not be associated with any specific detected member of the group, both the kinematic and dust properties are consistent with the DLA originating in streams of gas stripped from sub-L* group members at <~25 pkpc from the QSO sightline. This study demonstrates that gas stripping in low-mass galaxy groups is effective in releasing metal-enriched gas from star-forming regions, producing absorption systems in QSO spectra, and that combining absorption and emission-line observations provides an exciting new opportunity for studying gas and galaxy co-evolution.
The recent discovery by Cantalupo et al. (2014) of the largest (~500 kpc) and luminous Ly-alpha nebula associated with the quasar UM287 (z=2.279) poses a great challenge to our current understanding of the astrophysics of the halos hosting massive z~2 galaxies. Either an enormous reservoir of cool gas is required $Msimeq10^{12}$ $M_{odot}$, exceeding the expected baryonic mass available, or one must invoke extreme gas clumping factors not present in high-resolution cosmological simulations. However, observations of Ly-alpha emission alone cannot distinguish between these two scenarios. We have obtained the deepest ever spectroscopic integrations in the HeII and CIV lines with the goal of detecting extended line emission, but detect neither line to a 3$sigma$ limiting SB $simeq10^{-18}$ erg/s/cm$^2$/arcsec$^2$. We construct models of the expected emission spectrum in the highly probable scenario that the nebula is powered by photoionization from the central hyper-luminous quasar. The non-detection of HeII implies that the nebular emission arises from a mass $M_{rm c}lesssim6.4times10^{10}$ $M_{odot}$ of cool gas on ~200 kpc scales, distributed in a population of remarkably dense ($n_{rm H}gtrsim3$ cm$^{-3}$) and compact ($Rlesssim20$ pc) clouds, which would clearly be unresolved by current cosmological simulations. Given the large gas motions suggested by the Ly-alpha line ($vsimeq$ 500 km/s), it is unclear how these clouds survive without being disrupted by hydrodynamic instabilities. Our study serves as a benchmark for future deep integrations with current and planned wide-field IFU such as MUSE, KCWI, and KMOS. Our work suggest that a $simeq$ 10 hr exposure would likely detect ~10 rest-frame UV/optical emission lines, opening up the possibility of conducting detailed photoionization modeling to infer the physical state of gas in the CGM.
In the last few years, prominent high-ionization nebular emission lines (i.e., OIII], CIII], CIV, HeII) have been observed in the deep UV spectra of z~5-7 galaxies, indicating that extreme radiation fields characterize reionization-era systems. These lines have been linked to the leakage of Lyman continuum photons both theoretically and observationally. Consequently, high-ionization UV emission lines present our best probe to detect and characterize the most distant galaxies that we will observe in the coming years, and are key to understanding the sources of reionization, yet the physics governing their production is poorly understood. Here we present recent high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope spectra of two nearby extreme UV emission-line galaxies, J104457 and J141851. We report the first observations of intense nebular HeII and double-peaked, resonantly-scattered CIV emission, a combination that suggests these galaxies both produce and transmit a significant number of very high-energy ionizing photons (E>47.89 eV) through relatively low column densities of high-ionization gas. This suggests that, in addition to photons at the H-ionizing edge, the very hard ionizing photons that escape from these galaxies may provide a secondary source of ionization that is currently unconstrained observationally. Simultaneous radiative transfer models of LyA and CIV are needed to understand how ionizing radiation is transmitted through both low- and high-ionization gas. Future rest-frame FUV observations of galaxies within the epoch of reionization using the JWST or ELTs will allow us to constrain the escape of helium-ionizing photons and provide an estimate for their contribution to the reionization budget.
Using galaxies as background light sources to map the Lya absorption lines is a novel approach to study Damped Lya Absorbers (DLAs). We report the discovery of an intervening z = 3.335 +- 0.007 DLA along a galaxy sight-line identified among 80 Lyman Break Galaxy (LBG) spectra obtained with our Very Large Telescope/Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph survey in the SSA22 field. The measured DLA neutral hydrogen (HI) column density is log (NHI/cm^{-2}) = 21.68 +- 0.17. The DLA covering fraction over the extended background LBG is > 70% (2 sigma), yielding a conservative constraint on the DLA area of > 1 kpc^2. Our search for a counterpart galaxy hosting this DLA concludes that there is no counterpart galaxy with star formation rate (SFR) larger than a few Msun yr^{-1}, ruling out an unobscured violent star formation in the DLA gas cloud. We also rule out the possibility that the host galaxy of the DLA is a passive galaxy with Mstar > 5 x 10^{10} Msun or a heavily dust-obscured galaxy with E(B-V) > 2. The DLA may coincide with a large-scale overdensity of the spectroscopic LBGs. The occurrence rate of the DLA is compatible with that of DLAs found in QSO sight-lines.
We analyse the properties of the CIV broad emission line in connection with the X-ray emission of 30 bright SDSS quasars at z~3.0-3.3 with pointed XMM-Newton observations, which were selected to test the suitability of AGN as cosmological tools. In our previous work, we found that a large fraction (~25%) of the quasars in this sample are X-ray underluminous by factors of >3-10. As absorbing columns of >10$^{23}$ cm$^{-2}$ can be safely ruled out, their weakness is most likely intrinsic. Here we explore possible correlations between the UV and X-ray features of these sources to investigate the origin of X-ray weakness. We fit their UV SDSS spectra and analyse their CIV properties (e.g., equivalent width, EW; line peak velocity, $upsilon_{rm peak}$) as a function of the X-ray photon index and 2-10 keV flux. We confirm the trends of CIV $upsilon_{rm peak}$ and EW with UV luminosity at 2500 angstrom for both X-ray weak and X-ray normal quasars, as well as the correlation between X-ray weakness and CIV EW. In contrast to some recent work, we do not observe any clear relation between the 2-10 keV luminosity and $upsilon_{rm peak}$. We find a correlation between the hard X-ray flux and the integrated CIV flux for X-ray normal quasars, whilst X-ray weak quasars deviate from the main trend by more than 0.5 dex. We argue that X-ray weakness might be interpreted in a starved X-ray corona picture associated with an ongoing disc-wind phase. If the wind is ejected in the vicinity of the black hole, the extreme-UV radiation that reaches the corona will be depleted, depriving the corona of seeds photons and generating an X-ray weak quasar. Yet, at the largest UV luminosities (>10$^{47}$ erg s$^{-1}$), there will still be an ample reservoir of ionising photons that can explain the excess CIV emission observed in the X-ray weak quasars with respect to normal sources of similar X-ray luminosities.
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