Extremely strong DLAs at high redshift: Gas cooling and H\(_2\) formation

We present a spectroscopic investigation with VLT/X-shooter of seven candidate extremely strong damped Lyman-\(\alpha\) absorption systems (ESDLAs, \(N(\text{HI})\ge 5\times 10^{21}\) cm\(^{-2}\)) observed along quasar sightlines. We confirm the extremely high column densities, albeit slightly (0.1~...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-01
Main Authors: Telikova, K N, Balashev, S A, Noterdaeme, P, J -K Krogager, Ranjan, A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
Afterglows
Confidence intervals
Cooling
Cooling rate
Density
Galaxies
Gamma ray bursts
Gas cooling
Quasars
Red shift
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Summary:We present a spectroscopic investigation with VLT/X-shooter of seven candidate extremely strong damped Lyman-\(\alpha\) absorption systems (ESDLAs, \(N(\text{HI})\ge 5\times 10^{21}\) cm\(^{-2}\)) observed along quasar sightlines. We confirm the extremely high column densities, albeit slightly (0.1~dex) lower than the original ESDLA definition for four systems. We measured low-ionisation metal abundances and dust extinction for all systems. For two systems we also found strong associated H\(_2\) absorption \(\log N(\text{H\)_2\()[cm\)^{-2}\(]}=18.16\pm0.03\) and \(19.28\pm0.06\) at \(z=3.26\) and \(2.25\) towards J2205+1021 and J2359+1354, respectively), while for the remaining five we measured conservative upper limits on the H\(_2\) column densities of typically \(\log N(\text{H\)_2\()[cm\)^{-2}\(]}
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2201.00245