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.

arXiv comment31 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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