Statistical properties of damped Lyman-alpha systems from Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR12

Abstract

We present new estimates for the statistical properties of damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs). We compute the column density distribution function at $z>2$, the line density, $\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}X$, and the neutral hydrogen density, ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{DLA}}$. Our estimates are derived from the DLA catalogue of Garnett 2016, which uses the SDSS-III DR12 quasar spectroscopic survey. This catalogue provides a probability that a given spectrum contains a DLA, allowing us to use even the noisiest data without biasing our results and thus substantially increase our sample size. We measure a non-zero column density distribution function at $95\%$ confidence for all column densities $N_{\mathrm{HI}}<5\times 10^{22}$ cm${}^{-2}$. We make the first measurements from SDSS of $\mathrm{d}N/\mathrm{d}X$ and ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{DLA}}$ at $z>4$. We show that our results are insensitive to the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra, but that there is a residual dependence on quasar redshift for $z<2.5$, which may be due to remaining systematics in our analysis.

arXiv comment7 pages, 6 figures, plus 6 tables of figure values. Accepted by MNRAS with minor changes

References in corpus (33)

• The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III
• SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
• The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
• Radiative transfer in a clumpy universe: IV. New synthesis models of the cosmic UV/X-ray background
• The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 3
• On the Kinematics of the Damped Lyman Alpha Protogalaxies
• Column density distribution and cosmological mass density of neutral gas: Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Data Release 9
• On the (Non)Evolution of HI Disks over Cosmic Time
• Metallicity Evolution of Damped Lyman-alpha Systems out to z~5
• Damped Lyman alpha absorbers at high redshift -- large disks or galactic building blocks?
• Evolution of the cosmological mass density of neutral gas from Sloan Digital Sky Survey II - Data Release 7
• Damped Lyman Alpha Systems in Galaxy Formation Simulations
• The Neutral Hydrogen Cosmological Mass Density at z=5
• The ESO UVES Advanced Data Products Quasar Sample - II. Cosmological Evolution of the Neutral Gas Mass Density
• C, N, O Abundances in the Most Metal-Poor Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• The large-scale cross-correlation of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems with the Lyman Alpha Forest: First Measurements from BOSS
• A Direct Measurement of the IGM Opacity to HI Ionizing Photons
• The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation
• Through Thick and Thin - HI Absorption in Cosmological Simulations
• The Rapid Decline in Metallicity of Damped Ly-alpha Systems at z~5
• Damped Lyman-alpha absorbers as a probe of stellar feedback
• Dissecting the properties of optically-thick hydrogen at the peak of cosmic star formation history
• The Nature of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems and Their Hosts in the Standard Cold Dark Matter Universe
• Reproducing the Kinematics of Damped Lyman-alpha Systems
• The BOSS Lyman-alpha Forest Sample from SDSS Data Release 9
• Directly imaging damped Ly-alpha galaxies at z>2. III: The star formation rates of neutral gas reservoirs at z~2.7
• GALEX far-UV color selection of UV-bright high-redshift quasars
• The evolution of neutral gas in damped Lyman $\alpha$ systems from the XQ-100 survey
• The Magellan Uniform Survey of Damped Lyman alpha Systems I: Cosmic Metallicity Evolution
• Exploring the dust content of SDSS DR7 damped Lyman alpha systems at 2.15$\le z_{ab}<$5.2
• Testing Cosmological Models Against the Abundance of Damped Lyman-Alpha Absorbers
• The Mean Metal-line Absorption Spectrum of DLAs in BOSS
• Detecting Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Absorbers with Gaussian Processes

Cited by in corpus (43)

• The Cosmic Baryon and Metal Cycles
• Atomic and molecular gas in IllustrisTNG galaxies at low redshift
• Neutral hydrogen (HI) gas content of galaxies at $z\approx 0.32$
• Deep Learning of Quasar Spectra to Discover and Characterize Damped Lya Systems
• Reionization in Technicolor
• High-redshift post-reionization cosmology with 21cm intensity mapping
• Simulating the effect of high column density absorbers on the one-dimensional Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum
• An accurate low-redshift measurement of the cosmic neutral hydrogen density
• FLASH Early Science -- Discovery of an intervening HI 21-cm absorber from an ASKAP survey of the GAMA 23 field
• The First Large Absorption Survey in HI (FLASH): I. Science Goals and Survey Design
• Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers from Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR16Q with Gaussian processes
• Detecting Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Absorbers with Gaussian Processes
• Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO): HI stacking experiments with early science data
• The evolution of neutral hydrogen over the past 11 Gyr via HI 21 cm absorption
• The Arecibo Ultra-Deep Survey
• The Astrophysical Consequences of Intervening Galaxy Gas on Fast Radio Bursts
• Detecting Multiple DLAs per Spectrum in SDSS DR12 with Gaussian Processes
• Synergies between radio, optical and microwave observations at high redshift
• Connecting cosmological accretion to strong Lyman-alpha absorbers
• Simulated metal and HI absorption lines at the conclusion of Reionization
• An HI intensity mapping survey with a Phased Array Feed
• High-redshift Damped Ly-alpha Absorbing Galaxy Model Reproducing the N(HI)-Z Distribution
• uGMRT detection of associated HI 21 cm absorption at $z\approx 3.5$
• On the accuracy of common moment-based radiative transfer methods for simulating reionization
• Searching for HI imprints in cosmic web filaments with 21-cm intensity mapping
• A statistical measurement of the HI spin temperature in DLAs at cosmological distances
• HI intensity mapping with the MIGHTEE survey: power spectrum estimates
• Testing Galaxy Formation Simulations with Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Abundance and Metallicity Evolution
• The distribution and properties of DLAs at z $\le$ 2 in the EAGLE simulations
• Gaia-assisted selection of a quasar reddened by dust in an extremely-strong Damped Lyman-α Absorber at z=2.226
• Towards $21$-cm intensity mapping at $z=2.28$ with uGMRT using the tapered gridded estimator -- IV. Wideband analysis
• Interferometric Cubelet Stacking to Recover H\,\textsc{i} Emission from Distant Galaxies
• Modeling Post-Reionization HI Distributions in Fuzzy Dark Matter Cosmologies Using Conditional Normalizing Flows
• Searching for cold gas traced by MgII quasar absorbers in massive X-ray-selected galaxy clusters
• The Qz5 Survey (I): How the HI Mass Density of the Universe Evolves With Cosmic Time
• Statistical distribution of HI 21cm intervening absorbers as potential cosmic acceleration probes
• Automated Measurement of Quasar Redshift with a Gaussian Process
• Mind the gap: the power of combining photometric surveys with intensity mapping
• Measuring Cosmic Density of Neutral Hydrogen via Stacking the DINGO-VLA Data
• CHILES X: Molecular and atomic gas at intermediate redshift
• HI Intensity Mapping cross-correlation with thermal SZ fluctuations: forecasted cosmological parameters estimation for FAST and Planck
• Can UVB variations reconcile simulated quasar absorption lines at high redshift?
• NeutralUniverseMachine: Predictions of HI gas in Different Theoretical Models