The Statistical Properties of Neutral Gas at z<1.65 from UV Measurements of Damped Lyman Alpha Systems

Abstract

We derive the statistical properties of neutral gas at redshifts 0.11<z<1.65 from UV measurements of quasar Lyman alpha absorption lines corresponding to 369 MgII systems with $W_0^{\lambda 2796}\ge 0.3$ Å. In addition to the 41 damped Lyman alpha (DLA) systems presented in Rao et al. (2006), the current DLA sample includes 29 newly discovered DLAs. Of these, 26 were found in our HST ACS prism survey for DLAs (Turnshek et al. 2015) and three were found in a GALEX archival search. In addition, an HST COS Cycle 19 survey yielded no DLAs that could be used for this study. Formally, this DLA sample includes 70 systems with $N_{\mathrm{HI}}\ge 2\times 10^{20}$ atoms cm${}^{-2}$. We find that the incidence of DLAs, or the product of their gas cross section and their comoving number density, can be described by $n_{\mathrm{DLA}}(z)=(0.027\pm 0.007)(1+z{)}^{(1.682\pm 0.200)}$ over the redshift range 0<z<5. The cosmic mass density of neutral gas can be described by ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{DLA}}(z)=(4.77\pm 1.60)\times 10^{-4}(1+z{)}^{(0.64\pm 0.27)}$. The low-redshift column density distribution function is well-fitted by a power law of the form $f(N)\sim N^{\beta }$ with $\beta =-1.46\pm 0.20$. It is consistent with the high-redshift as well as z=0 estimates at the high column density end but, lies between them at the low column density end. We discuss possible $N_{\mathrm{HI}}$ and metallicity bias in MgII-selected DLA samples and show that such biases do not exist in the current data at z<1.65. Thus, at least at z<1.65, DLAs found through MgII selection statistically represent the true population of DLAs. However, we caution that studies of DLA metallicities should take into the account the relative incidence of DLAs with respect to $W_0^{\lambda 2796}$ (or gas velocity spread) in order to correctly measure the mean neutral-gas cosmic metallicity of the universe.

arXiv comment16 pages

References in corpus (57)

• Damped Lyman alpha Systems
• Damped Lyman Alpha Systems at z<1.65: The Expanded SDSS HST Sample
• The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 3
• The COS-Halos Survey: Rationale, Design, and A Census of Circumgalactic Neutral Hydrogen
• 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
• The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey: X. The HI Mass Function and Omega_HI From the 40% ALFALFA Survey
• Evolution of the cosmological mass density of neutral gas from Sloan Digital Sky Survey II - Data Release 7
• Physical properties of galactic winds using background quasars
• Discovery of Damped Lyman-Alpha Systems at Redshifts Less Than 1.65 and Results on their Incidence and Cosmological Mass Density
• Velocity-Metallicity Correlation for high-z DLA Galaxies: Evidence for a Mass-Metallicity Relation?
• Surveys for z > 3 Damped Lyman-alpha Absorption Systems
• The evolution of Omega(HI) and the epoch of formation of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers
• Mg II Absorption Systems in SDSS QSO Spectra
• Reconciling the local galaxy population with damped Ly-alpha cross sections and metal abundances
• The JHU-SDSS metal absorption line catalog: redshift evolution and properties of Mg II absorbers
• 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
• The HI content of star-forming galaxies at z = 0.24
• Detection of HI in distant galaxies using spectral stacking
• Cosmological evolution of atomic gas and implications for 21 cm HI absorption
• Mass-metallicity relation from z=5 to the present: Evidence for a transition in the mode of galaxy growth at z=2.6 due to the end of sustained primordial gas infall
• The Keck+Magellan Survey for Lyman Limit Absorption I: The Frequency Distribution of Super Lyman Limit Systems
• Neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) gas evolution in field galaxies at z ~ 0.1 and 0.2
• The ESO UVES Advanced Data Products Quasar Sample - VI. Sub-Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ Metallicity Measurements and the Circum-Galactic Medium
• The HI Content of the Universe over the Past 10 Gyrs
• A Hubble Space Telescope Study of Lyman Limit Systems: Census and Evolution
• Modeling the distribution of Mg II absorbers around galaxies using Background Galaxies & Quasars
• The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 1
• The Role of Sub-damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers in the Cosmic Evolution of Metals
• The UCSD Radio-Selected Quasar Survey for Damped Lyman alpha System
• The First Observations of Low Redshift Damped Lyman-alpha Systems with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
• The evolution of neutral gas in damped Lyman $\alpha$ systems from the XQ-100 survey
• A search for HI 21cm absorption in strong MgII absorbers in the redshift desert
• The Pittsburgh Sloan Digital Sky Survey MgII Quasar Absorption-Line Survey Catalog
• The First Observations of Low-Redshift Damped Lyman-α Systems with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph: Chemical Abundances and Affiliated Galaxies
• Elemental Abundance Measurements in Low-redshift Damped Lyman Alpha Absorbers
• Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Sub-Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers at z < 0.5, and Implications for Galaxy Chemical Evolution
• The connection between metallicity and metal-line kinematics in (sub-)damped Lyman-alpha systems
• A Survey of Weak MgII Absorbers at 0.4 < z < 2.4
• Do Damped and Sub-damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers Arise in Galaxies of Different Masses?
• Elemental Abundances in Two High Column Density Damped Lyman Alpha Systems at z < 1.5
• Measurements of CaII absorption, metals, and dust in a sample of z~1 DLAs and subDLAs
• Precious Metals in SDSS Quasar Spectra II: Tracking the Evolution of Strong, 0.4 < z < 2.3 MgII Absorbers with Thousands of Systems
• The ESO UVES Advanced Data Products Quasar Sample - I. Dataset and New N_HI Measurements of Damped Absorbers
• HI content, metallicities and spin temperatures of damped and sub-damped Lyman alpha systems in the redshift desert (0.6 < z < 1.7)
• Revisiting the origin of the high metallicities of sub-damped Lyman-alpha systems
• MgII Absorption at 2 < z < 6 with Magellan / FIRE. II: A Longitudinal Study of HI, Metals, and Ionization in Galactic Haloes
• Classical and MgII-selected Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers: impact on Omega_HI at z<1.7
• Keck and VLT Observations of Super-damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers at z=2=2.5: Constraints on Chemical Compositions and Physical Conditions
• MMT Survey for Intervening MgII Absorption
• On the selection of damped Lyman alpha systems using MgII absorption at 2<z<4
• Imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies associated with two z~0.7 damped Lyman-alpha absorption systems
• A search for damped Lyman-alpha systems towards radio-loud quasars I: The optical survey
• Thirty-six New, High-Probability, Damped Ly-alpha Absorbers at Redshift 0.42 < z < 0.70
• GALEX Discovery of a Damped Ly-alpha System at Redshift z = 1

Cited by in corpus (55)

• The Cosmic Baryon and Metal Cycles
• The Evolution of the Baryons Associated with Galaxies Averaged over Cosmic Time and Space
• Atomic and molecular gas in IllustrisTNG galaxies at low redshift
• FIREbox: Simulating galaxies at high dynamic range in a cosmological volume
• HI constraints from the cross-correlation of eBOSS galaxies and Green Bank Telescope intensity maps
• Detection of Cosmological 21 cm Emission with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
• The cosmic evolution of dust-corrected metallicity in the neutral gas
• HI 21-centimetre emission from an ensemble of galaxies at an average redshift of one
• Neutral hydrogen (HI) gas content of galaxies at $z\approx 0.32$
• Atomic hydrogen in star-forming galaxies at intermediate redshifts
• Slicing the cool circumgalactic medium along the major-axis of a star-forming galaxy at $z=0.7$
• Mg II absorbers: metallicity evolution and cloud morphology
• The COS CGM Compendium. II: Metallicities of the Partial and Lyman Limit Systems at z<1
• Forecast for FAST: from Galaxies Survey to Intensity Mapping
• An accurate low-redshift measurement of the cosmic neutral hydrogen density
• The First Large Absorption Survey in HI (FLASH): I. Science Goals and Survey Design
• FLASH Early Science -- Discovery of an intervening HI 21-cm absorber from an ASKAP survey of the GAMA 23 field
• Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO): HI stacking experiments with early science data
• A successful search for intervening 21 cm HI absorption in galaxies at 0.4 < z <1.0 with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
• A direct detection of neutral hydrogen intensity mapping on Mpc scales at $z\approx 0.32$ and $z\approx 0.44$
• The evolution of neutral hydrogen over the past 11 Gyr via HI 21 cm absorption
• Atomic and molecular gas from the epoch of reionization down to redshift 2
• The Arecibo Ultra-Deep Survey
• The Astrophysical Consequences of Intervening Galaxy Gas on Fast Radio Bursts
• An Ultraviolet Survey of Low-Redshift Partial Lyman-Limit Systems with the HST Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
• Extracting HI Astrophysics from Interferometric Intensity Mapping
• Average [O II] nebular emission associated with Mg II absorbers: Dependence on Fe II absorption
• An ASKAP survey for HI absorption towards dust-obscured quasars
• Toward a direct measurement of the cosmic acceleration: roadmap and forecast on FAST
• The HI-halo mass relation at redshift $z\sim 1$ from the Minkowski functionals of 21 cm intensity maps
• Sub-damped Lyman alpha systems in the XQ-100 survey II -- Chemical evolution at 2.4<z<4.3
• Host Galaxies of Ultra Strong Mg II absorbers at z $\sim$ 0.5
• HI absorption at z~0.7 against the lobe of the powerful radio galaxy PKS 0409-75
• A statistical measurement of the HI spin temperature in DLAs at cosmological distances
• The distribution and properties of DLAs at z $\le$ 2 in the EAGLE simulations
• The evolution of cold neutral gas and the star formation history
• The mid-infrared properties and gas content of active galaxies over large look-back times
• A study of the HI gas fractions of galaxies at z ~ 1
• A survey of Ly$\alpha$ emission around Damped Ly$\alpha$ absorbers at $z\approx 2$ with the Keck Cosmic Web Imager
• Probing galaxy evolution through HI 21-cm emission and absorption: current status and prospects with the Square Kilometre Array
• The Population of Galaxies that Contribute to The HI Mass Function
• Observations of cold extragalactic gas clouds at $z=0.45$ towards PKS 1610-771
• The potential of tracing the star formation history with HI 21-cm in intervening absorption systems
• Interferometric Cubelet Stacking to Recover H\,\textsc{i} Emission from Distant Galaxies
• Cold neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies
• 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
• A search for HI absorption in distant star-forming galaxies with ASKAP-FLASH -- I. Selection and analysis of the radio sample
• Redshift drift effect through the observation of HI 21cm signal with SKA
• Mind the gap: the power of combining photometric surveys with intensity mapping
• CHILES X: Molecular and atomic gas at intermediate redshift
• Neutral-Gas-Phase Metal Abundances in ZnII-Selected Quasar Absorption Line Systems near Redshift $z=1.2$
• Measuring Cosmic Density of Neutral Hydrogen via Stacking the DINGO-VLA Data
• Semi-empirical constraints on the HI mass function of star-forming galaxies and ${\Omega }_{\mathrm{HI}}$ at $z\sim 0.37$ from interferometric surveys
• NeutralUniverseMachine: Predictions of HI gas in Different Theoretical Models