The multiple coherence scales of C IV at cosmic noon

Abstract

The spatial and kinematic structure of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) remains poorly constrained observationally. In this article we compute the clustering of CIV absorption systems at cosmic noon using quasar pairs. We analyze VLT/UVES and Keck/HIRES high-resolution spectra (R = 45000) of a sample of 8 projected and 4 lensed quasar pairs that probe transverse separations, $\Delta r$, from sub-kpc to a few Mpc, over the redshift range 1.6 < z < 3.3. We detect and fit Voigt profiles to a total of 141 CIV systems, corresponding to 620 velocity components across all quasar lines-of-sight. We compute the two-point correlation function of CIV, $\xi (\Delta v,\Delta r)$, where $\Delta v$ is the velocity difference between components across all available scales. We find a strong dependence of $\xi (\Delta r)$ with $\Delta r$ at all velocities. $\xi (\Delta r)$ reaches a sharp peak at the smallest scales analyzed here, $\Delta r\approx 0.1$ kpc, decreases steadily up to $\Delta r\approx 5$ kpc and remains flat up to $\Delta r\approx 500$ kpc, where it begins to decrease again. By fitting power-laws to the projected transverse correlation function $\Xi (\Delta r)$, we infer two coherence lengths: $r_1=654_{-87}^{+100}$ kpc, which we interpret as a representative size for the CIV enriched regions at $z\approx 2$, and $r_2=4.70_{-1.19}^{+1.60}$ kpc for the individual CIV-bearing "clouds". Projecting instead in $\Delta r$, we find consistent amplitudes of $\xi (\Delta v)$ with previous work using quasars and extended background sources. Our results suggest that CIV may be a good tracer of not only the small, internal structure of the circumgalactic medium, but also of the way in which galaxies cluster at cosmic noon.

Accepted for publication in A&A

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