Significant H I and Metal Differences around the z = 0.83 Lens Galaxy Towards the Doubly Lensed Quasar SBS 0909+532

Abstract

We report a large difference in neutral hydrogen (H I) and metal column densities between the two sight lines probing opposite sides of the lensing galaxy at $z_{\mathrm{lens}}$ = 0.83 toward the doubly lensed quasar SBS 0909+532. Using archival HST-STIS and Keck HIRES spectra of the lensed quasar images, we measure log $N_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}}$ = 18.77 $\pm$ 0.12 cm${}^{-2}$ toward the brighter image ($A$) at an impact parameter of $r_A$ = 3.15 kpc and log $N_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}}$ = 20.38 $\pm$ 0.20 cm${}^{-2}$ toward the fainter image ($B$) at an impact parameter of $r_B$ = 5.74 kpc. This difference by a factor of $\sim$41 is the highest difference between sight lines for a lens galaxy in which H I has been measured, suggesting patchiness and/or anisotropy on these scales. We estimate an average Fe abundance gradient between the sight lines to be $\ge$ +0.35 dex kpc${}^{-1}$. The $N_{\mathrm{Fe}\mathrm{II}}$/$N_{\mathrm{Mg}\mathrm{II}}$ ratios for the individual components detected in the Keck HIRES spectra have supersolar values for all components in sight line $A$ and for 11 out of 18 components in sight line $B$, suggesting that Type Ia supernovae may have contributed to the chemical enrichment of the galaxy's environment. Additionally, these observations provide complementary information to detections of cold gas in early-type galaxies and the tension between these and some models of cloud survival.

20 pages, 6 tables, 11 figures

References in corpus (11)

• The Structure & Dynamics of Massive Early-type Galaxies: On Homology, Isothermality and Isotropy inside one Effective Radius
• H3+ in Diffuse Interstellar Clouds: a Tracer for the Cosmic-Ray Ionization Rate
• Resolving small-scale cold circumgalactic gas in TNG50
• The M33 Metallicity Project: Resolving the Abundance Gradient Discrepancies in M33
• The Clustering of MgII Absorption Systems at z=0.5 and Detection of Cold Gas in Massive Halos
• Disentangling microlensing and differential extinction in the double QSO HE0512-3329
• Preventing Star Formation in Early-Type Galaxies with Late-Time Stellar Heating
• Differential X-ray Absorption and Dust-To-Gas Ratios of the Lens Galaxies SBS0909+523, FBQS0951+2635, and B1152+199
• Cool circumgalactic gas of passive galaxies from cosmological inflow
• Probing Structure in Cold Gas at $z\lesssim 1$ with Gravitationally Lensed Quasar Sight Lines
• HST Detection of Extended Neutral Hydrogen in a Massive Elliptical at z = 0.4

Cited by in corpus (4)

• A Survey for High-redshift Gravitationally Lensed Quasars and Close Quasars Pairs. I. the Discoveries of an Intermediately-lensed Quasar and a Kpc-scale Quasar Pair at $z\sim 5$
• A Mock Catalog of Gravitationally Lensed Quasars for the LSST Survey
• MUSE-ALMA Haloes VIII: Statistical Study of Circumgalactic Medium Gas
• J1721$+$8842: a gravitationally lensed binary quasar with a proximate damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorber