Fluorescent Lyman-alpha Emission from Gas Near a QSO at Redshift 4.28

Abstract

We use integral field spectroscopy with the Gemini North Telescope to detect probable fluorescent Ly-alpha emission from gas lying close to the luminous QSO PSS 2155+1358 at redshift 4.28. The emission is most likely coming not from primordial gas, but from a multi-phase, chemically enriched cloud of gas lying about 50 kpc from the QSO. It appears to be associated with a highly ionised associated absorber seen in the QSO spectrum. With the exception of this gas cloud, the environment of the QSO is remarkably free of neutral hydrogen. We also marginally detect Ly-alpha emission from a foreground sub-Damped-Ly-alpha absorption-line system.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (1)

• The Lyman-alpha glow of gas falling into the dark matter halo of a z=3 galaxy

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