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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(743), p. 95, 2011

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/743/1/95

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DISCOVERY OF COLD, PRISTINE GAS POSSIBLY ACCRETING ONTO AN OVERDENSITY OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTz∼ 1.6

Journal article published in 2011 by Mauro Giavalisco, Eros Vanzella ORCID, Sara Salimbeni, Todd M. Tripp, Mark Dickinson, Paolo Cassata, Alvio Renzini ORCID, Yicheng Guo, Henry C. Ferguson, Mario Nonino ORCID, Andrea Cimatti, Jaron Kurk, Marco Mignoli ORCID, Yuping Tang
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We report the discovery of large amounts of cold (T ~ 10^4 K), chemically young gas in an overdensity of galaxies at redshift z ~ 1.6 in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey southern field (GOODS-S). The gas is identified thanks to the ultra-strong Mg II absorption features it imprints in the rest-frame UV spectra of galaxies in the background of the overdensity. There is no evidence that the optically-thick gas is part of any massive galaxy (i.e. M_star > 4x10^9 M_sun), but rather is associated with the overdensity; less massive and fainter galaxies (25.5 ~ 10^20 cm-2) based on the observed fraction of galaxies with ultra-strong absorbers is C_F ~ 0.04. A broad, continuum absorption profile extending to the red of the interstellar Mg II absorption line by