The unprecedentedly bright optical afterglow of GRB 130606A located by Swift at a redshift close to the reionization era (z = 5.913) provides a new opportunity to probe the ionization status of intergalactic medium (IGM). Here we present an analysis
of the red Ly alpha damping wing of the afterglow spectrum taken by Subaru/FOCAS during 10.4-13.2 hr after the burst. We find that the minimal model including only the baseline power-law and HI absorption in the host galaxy does not give a good fit, leaving residuals showing concave curvature in 8400-8900 A with an amplitude of about 0.6% of the flux. Such a curvature in the short wavelength range cannot be explained either by extinction at the host with standard extinction curves, intrinsic curvature of afterglow spectra, or by the known systematic uncertainties in the observed spectrum. The red damping wing by intervening HI gas outside the host can reduce the residual by about 3 sigma statistical significance. We find that a damped Ly alpha system is not favored as the origin of this intervening HI absorption, from the observed Ly beta and metal absorption features. Therefore absorption by diffuse IGM remains as a plausible explanation. A fit by a simple uniform IGM model requires HI neutral fraction of f_HI ~ 0.1-0.5 depending on the distance to the GRB host, implying high f_HI IGM associated with the observed dark Gunn-Peterson (GP) troughs. This gives a new evidence that the reionization is not yet complete at z ~ 6.
We present Subaru observations of the newly discovered luminous quasar AKARI J1757+5907, which shows an absorption outflow in its spectrum. The absorption consists of 9 distinct troughs, and our analysis focuses on the troughs at ~ -1000$ km s^{-1} f
or which we can measure accurate column densities of He I*, Fe II and Mg II. We use photoionization models to constrain the ionization parameter, total hydrogen column density, and the number density of the outflowing gas. These constraints yield lower limits for the distance, mass flow rate and kinetic luminosity for the outflow of 3.7 kpc, 70 M_{sun} yr^{-1}, and 2.0 x 10^{43} ergs s^{-1}, respectively. Such mass flow rate value can contribute significantly to the metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium. We find that this moderate velocity outflow is similar to those recently discovered in massive post-starburst galaxies. Finally, we describe the scientific potential of future observations targeting this object.
I present the discovery of Balmer-line absorption from H alpha to H9 in iron low-ionizaton broad absorption line (FeLoBAL) quasar, SDSS~J172341.10+555340.5 by near-infrared spectroscopy with the Cooled Infrared Spectrograph and Camera for OHS (CISCO)
attached to the Subaru telescope. The redshift of the Balmer-line absorption troughs is 2.0530 +/- 0.0003, and it is blueshifted by 5370 km s^{-1} from the Balmer emission lines. It is more than $4000$ km s^{-1} blueshifted from the previously known UV absorption lines. I detect relatively strong (EW_rest=20A) [O III] emission lines which are similar to those found in other broad absorption line quasars with Balmer-line absorption. I derived a column density of neutral hydrogen of 5.2x10^{17} cm^{-2} by using the curve of growth and taking account of Ly alpha trapping. I searched for UV absorption lines which have the same redshift with Balmer-line absorption. I found Al II} and Fe III absorption lines at z=2.053 which correspond to previously unidentified absorption lines, and the presence of other blended troughs that were difficult to identify.
We examine variability of absorption line strength of intervening systems along the line of sight to GRB 060206 at $z = 4.05$, by the low-resolution optical spectra obtained by the Subaru telescope from six to ten hours after the burst. Strong variab
ilities of Feemissiontype{II} and Mgemissiontype{II} lines at $z=1.48$ during $t=$5--8 hours have been reported for this GRB citep{Hao07}, and this has been used to support the idea of clumpy Mgemissiontype{II} cloudlets that was originally proposed to explain the anomalously high incidence of Mgemissiontype{II} absorbers in GRB spectra compared with quasars . However, our spectra with higher signal-to-noise ratio do not show any evidence for variability in $t=$6-10 hours. There is a clear discrepancy between our data and Hao et al. data in the overlapping time interval. Furthermore, the line strengths in our data are in good agreement with those observed at $t sim$ 2 hours by citet{Tho08}. We also detected Feemissiontype{II} and Mgemissiontype{II} absorption lines for a system at $z = 2.26$, and these lines do not show evidence for variability either. Therefore we conclude that there is no strong evidence for variability of intervening absorption lines toward GRB 060206, significantly weakening the support to the Mgemissiontype{II} cloudlet hypothe sis by the GRB 060206 data.
