Resolving the H i in damped Lyman α systems that power star formation

Rongmon Bordoloi (), John M. O’Meara, Keren Sharon, Jane R. Rigby, Jeff Cooke, Ahmed Shaban, Mateusz Matuszewski, Luca Rizzi, Greg Doppmann, D. Christopher Martin, Anna M. Moore, Patrick Morrissey and James D. Neill
Additional contact information
Rongmon Bordoloi: North Carolina State University
John M. O’Meara: W.M. Keck Observatory
Keren Sharon: University of Michigan
Jane R. Rigby: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Jeff Cooke: Swinburne University of Technology
Ahmed Shaban: North Carolina State University
Mateusz Matuszewski: Cahill Center for Astrophysics, Caltech
Luca Rizzi: W.M. Keck Observatory
Greg Doppmann: W.M. Keck Observatory
D. Christopher Martin: Cahill Center for Astrophysics, Caltech
Anna M. Moore: Australian National University
Patrick Morrissey: Cahill Center for Astrophysics, Caltech
James D. Neill: Cahill Center for Astrophysics, Caltech

Nature, 2022, vol. 606, issue 7912, 59-63

Abstract: Abstract Reservoirs of dense atomic gas (primarily hydrogen) contain approximately 90 per cent of the neutral gas at a redshift of 3, and contribute to between 2 and 3 per cent of the total baryons in the Universe1–4. These ‘damped Lyman α systems’—so called because they absorb Lyman α photons within and from background sources—have been studied for decades, but only through absorption lines present in the spectra of background quasars and γ-ray bursts5–10. 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 α systems. These systems are greater than 238 kiloparsecs squared in extent, with column densities of neutral hydrogen varying by more than an order of magnitude on scales of less than 3 kiloparsecs. The mean column densities are between 1020.46 and 1020.84 centimetres squared and the total masses are greater than 5.5 × 108–1.4 × 109 times the mass of the Sun, showing that they contain the necessary fuel for the next generation of star formation, consistent with relatively massive, low-luminosity primeval galaxies at redshifts greater than 2.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04616-1

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