The COS CGM Compendium (CCC). II. Lyman limit syst. Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Wotta C.B.
  2. Lehner N.
  3. Howk J.C.
  4. O'Meara J.M.
  5. Oppenheimer B.D.,Cooksey K.L.
  6. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We present the results from our COS circumgalactic medium (CGM) compendium (CCC), a survey of the CGM at z<~1 using HI-selected absorbers with 15<logN_HI_<19. We focus here on 82 partial Lyman limit systems (pLLSs, 16.2<=logN_HI_<17.2) and 29 LLSs (17.2<=logN_HI_<19). Using Bayesian techniques and Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling of a grid of photoionization models, we derive the posterior probability distribution functions (PDFs) for the metallicity of each absorber in CCC. We show that the combined pLLS metallicity PDF at z<~1 has two main peaks at [X/H]~-1.7 and -0.4, with a strong dip at [X/H]~-1. The metallicity PDF of the LLSs might be more complicated than a unimodal or bimodal distribution. The pLLSs and LLSs probe a similar range of metallicities -3<~[X/H]<~+0.4, but the fraction of very metal-poor absorbers with [X/H]<~-1.4 is much larger for the pLLSs than the LLSs. In contrast, absorbers with logN_HI_>=19 have mostly -1<~[X/H]<~0 at z<~1. The metal-enriched gas probed by pLLSs and LLSs confirms that galaxies that have been enriching their CGM over billions of years. Surprisingly, despite this enrichment, there is also abundant metal-poor CGM gas (41%-59% of the pLLSs have [X/H]<~-1.4), representing a reservoir of near-pristine gas around z<~1 galaxies. We compare our empirical results to recent cosmological zoom simulations, finding some discrepancies, including an overabundance of metal- enriched CGM gas in simulations.

Keywords
  1. spectroscopy
  2. ultraviolet-astronomy
  3. intergalactic-medium
  4. chemical-abundances
  5. redshifted
  6. h-i-line-emission
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2019ApJ...872...81W
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/872/81
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/872/81
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18720081

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History

2020-08-26T13:53:36Z
Resource record created
2020-08-26T13:53:36Z
Created
2022-10-14T13:10:27Z
Updated

Contact

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CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
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