TY - JOUR
T1 - Strong Mg II and Fe II absorbers at 2.2 > z > 6.0
AU - Zou, Siwei
AU - Jiang, Linhua
AU - Shen, Yue
AU - Wu, Jin
AU - Bañados, Eduardo
AU - Fan, Xiaohui
AU - Ho, Luis C.
AU - Riechers, Dominik A.
AU - Venemans, Bram
AU - Vestergaard, Marianne
AU - Walter, Fabian
AU - Wang, Feige
AU - Willott, Chris J.
AU - Joshi, Ravi
AU - Wu, Xue Bing
AU - Yang, Jinyi
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the very constructive comments and suggestions from the anonymous referee. We thank Patrick Petitjean for useful comments and Robert A. Simcoe for discussion on FIRE data. We acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation of China (11533001, 11721303, 11890693, 11991052), the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0400702, 2016YFA0400703), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) through a China-Chile Joint Research Fund #1503 administered by the CAS South America Center for Astronomy in Santiago, Chile. Y.S.
Funding Information:
acknowledges support from an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and National Science Foundation grant No. AST-1715579. M.V. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark via grant No. DFF 8021-00130. We acknowledge the public data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS), and the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS). We thank observations obtained with MegaPrime/ MegaCam, a joint project of CFHT and CEA/DAPNIA, at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), which is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institut National des Science de l’Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of France, and the University of Hawaii. Facility: Gemini(GNIRS).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. The Author(s).
PY - 2021/1/1
Y1 - 2021/1/1
N2 - We present a study of strong intervening absorption systems in the near-IR spectra of 31 luminous quasars at z < 5.7. The quasar spectra were obtained with Gemini GNIRS that provide continuous wavelength coverage from ∼0.9 to ∼2.5 μm. We detect 32 strong Mg II doublet absorbers with rest-frame equivalent width Wr(lambda;2796) < 1.0 Å at 2.2 > z > 6.0. Each Mg II absorber is confirmed by at least two associated Fe II absorption lines in the rest-frame wavelength range of ∼1600-2600 Å. We find that the comoving line density (dN/dX) of the strong Fe II-bearing Mg II absorbers decreases toward higher redshift at z < 3, consistent with previous studies. Compared with strong Mg II absorbers detected in damped Lyα systems at 2 > z > 4, our absorbers are potentially less saturated and show much larger rest-frame velocity widths. This suggests that the gas traced by our absorbers are potentially affected by galactic superwinds. We analyze the Hubble Space Telescope near-IR images of the quasars and identify possible associated galaxies for our strong absorbers. There are a maximum of two galaxy candidates found within 5"radius of each absorber. The median F105W-band magnitude of these galaxy candidates is 24.8 mag, which is fainter than the L*galaxy luminosity at z ∼ 4. By using our observed dN/dX of strong Mg II absorbers and galaxy candidates median luminosity, we suggest that at high redshift, strong Mg II absorbers tend to have a more disturbed environment but smaller halo size than that at z > 1.
AB - We present a study of strong intervening absorption systems in the near-IR spectra of 31 luminous quasars at z < 5.7. The quasar spectra were obtained with Gemini GNIRS that provide continuous wavelength coverage from ∼0.9 to ∼2.5 μm. We detect 32 strong Mg II doublet absorbers with rest-frame equivalent width Wr(lambda;2796) < 1.0 Å at 2.2 > z > 6.0. Each Mg II absorber is confirmed by at least two associated Fe II absorption lines in the rest-frame wavelength range of ∼1600-2600 Å. We find that the comoving line density (dN/dX) of the strong Fe II-bearing Mg II absorbers decreases toward higher redshift at z < 3, consistent with previous studies. Compared with strong Mg II absorbers detected in damped Lyα systems at 2 > z > 4, our absorbers are potentially less saturated and show much larger rest-frame velocity widths. This suggests that the gas traced by our absorbers are potentially affected by galactic superwinds. We analyze the Hubble Space Telescope near-IR images of the quasars and identify possible associated galaxies for our strong absorbers. There are a maximum of two galaxy candidates found within 5"radius of each absorber. The median F105W-band magnitude of these galaxy candidates is 24.8 mag, which is fainter than the L*galaxy luminosity at z ∼ 4. By using our observed dN/dX of strong Mg II absorbers and galaxy candidates median luminosity, we suggest that at high redshift, strong Mg II absorbers tend to have a more disturbed environment but smaller halo size than that at z > 1.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/abc6ff
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/abc6ff
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099191386
VL - 906
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 1
M1 - abc6ff
ER -