Resolving the HI in Damped Lyman-α systems that power star-formation

Abstract

Reservoirs of dense atomic gas (primarily hydrogen), contain approximately 90 percent of the neutral gas at a redshift of 3, and contribute to 2-3 percent of the total baryons in the Universe. These damped Lyman-$\alpha$ systems (so called because they absorb Lyman-$\alpha$ photons from within and from background sources) have been studied for decades, but only through absorption lines present in the spectra of background quasars and gamma-ray bursts. Such pencil beams do not constrain the physical extent of the systems. Here, we report integral-field spectroscopy of a bright, gravitationally lensed galaxy at a redshift of 2.7 with two foreground damped Lyman-$\alpha$ systems. These systems are $>$ 238 $kp{c}^2$ in extent, with column densities of neutral hydrogen varying by more than an order of magnitude on $<$ 3 kpc-scales. The mean column densities are $10^{20.46}$ - $10^{20.84}c{m}^{-2}$ and the total masses are $>5.5\times 10^8$ - $1.4\times 10^9{M}_{\odot }$, showing that they contain the necessary fuel for the next generation of star formation, consistent with relatively massive, low-luminosity primeval galaxies at redshifts $>$ 2.

31 pages, 4 Figures, 4 Extended Data figures, 2 Extended Data tables, Author's version, Accepted: 4 March 2022, Published online by Nature on May 18, 2022

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) -- IV: The gaseous environment of $z\sim$ 3-4 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies
• Orientation effects on cool gas absorption from gravitational-arc tomography of a z = 0.77 disc galaxy
• MUSE-ALMA Halos XI: Gas flows in the circumgalactic medium
• Detections of 21-cm absorption with a blind FAST survey at z $⩽$ 0.09
• Compact [C II] emitters around a C IV absorption complex at redshift 5.7
• Transverse clues on the kpc-scale structure of the circumgalactic medium as traced by C IV absorption
• Spatially Resolved Circumgalactic Medium around a Star-Forming Galaxy Driving a Galactic Outflow at $z\approx 0.8$
• The FAST HI 21-cm absorption blind survey. II. -- Statistic Exploration for Associated and Intervening systems
• On the Metallicities and Kinematics of the Circumgalactic Media of Damped Ly$\alpha$ Systems at $z\sim 2.5$
• The multiple coherence scales of C IV at cosmic noon
• Intergalactic Medium Tomography with the Sunburst Arc