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A clumpy and anisotropic galaxy halo at redshift 1 from gravitational-arc tomography

Nature volume 554, pages 493–496 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Every star-forming galaxy has a halo of metal-enriched gas that extends out to at least 100 kiloparsecs1,2,3, as revealed by the absorption lines that this gas imprints on the spectra of background quasars4. However, quasars are sparse and typically probe only one narrow beam of emission through the intervening galaxy. Close quasar pairs5,6,7 and gravitationally lensed quasars8,9,10,11 have been used to circumvent this inherently one-dimensional technique, but these objects are rare and the structure of the circumgalactic medium remains poorly constrained. As a result, our understanding of the physical processes that drive the recycling of baryons across the lifetime of a galaxy is limited12,13. Here we report integral-field (tomographic) spectroscopy of an extended background source—a bright, giant gravitational arc. We can thus coherently map the spatial and kinematic distribution of Mg ɪɪ absorption—a standard tracer of enriched gas—in an intervening galaxy system at redshift 0.98 (around 8 billion years ago). Our gravitational-arc tomography unveils a clumpy medium in which the absorption strength decreases with increasing distance from the galaxy system, in good agreement with results for quasars. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that the gas is not distributed isotropically. Interestingly, we detect little kinematic variation over a projected area of approximately 600 square kiloparsecs, with all line-of-sight velocities confined to within a few tens of kilometres per second of each other. These results suggest that the detected absorption originates from entrained recycled material, rather than in a galactic outflow.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the lens geometry of the arc and the absorber in RCSGA 032727−132623.
Figure 2: Map of Mg ɪɪ absorption strengths at approximately 4-kpc resolution.
Figure 3: Mg ɪɪ absorption strength versus impact parameter.
Figure 4: Gas kinematics.

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Acknowledgements

This work has benefitted from discussions with A. Smette, N. Nielsen and G. Kacprzak. S.L. thanks the European Southern Observatory Scientific Visitor Selection Committee for supporting a research stay at the ESO headquarters in Santiago, where part of this work was done. S.L. has been supported by FONDECYT grant number 1140838. This work has also been partially supported by PFB-06 CATA. N.T. acknowledges support from CONICYT PAI/82140055.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 36-D, Santiago, Chile

    Sebastian Lopez

  2. Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Casilla 4059, Valparaíso, Chile

    Nicolas Tejos

  3. European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Casilla 19001, Santiago, Vitacura 19, Chile

    Cédric Ledoux

  4. Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile

    L. Felipe Barrientos & Ismael Pessa

  5. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Keren Sharon

  6. Observational Cosmology Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, 20771, Maryland, USA

    Jane R. Rigby

  7. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Michael D. Gladders

  8. Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Michael D. Gladders

  9. Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Matthew B. Bayliss

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Contributions

S.L. conceived and led the project. S.L. and N.T. wrote the MUSE telescope-time proposal and designed the observations. L.F.B. and N.T. prepared the remote observations and L.F.B. reduced the MUSE data. S.L., N.T. and C.L. analysed the data, performed simulations and devised ways to produce and interpret the results. S.L. wrote the main codes. N.T. and I.P. performed the blind survey of galaxies in the field of view. K.S. performed the lens model and L.F.B. supervised the design of Fig. 1. M.B.B. and L.F.B. performed the photometric characterization of the absorbing galaxies, and S.L., C.L. and N.T. the analysis of their spectra. Ancillary data from MagE and HST were provided by J.R.R. and M.D.G. S.L. wrote the manuscript and produced the rest of the figures, with contribution from N.T. All co-authors provided critical feedback and helped to shape the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastian Lopez.

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Reviewer Information Nature thanks H.-W. Chen and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Signal-to-noise ratio versus binning.

a, Three-dimensional representation of the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) at the position of Mg ɪɪ absorption in the unbinned data. b–d, Same as a but in two dimensions and for different binnings. The size of each binned spaxel is indicated in arcseconds; the colour scale is the same for all three panels. Note the expected increase in signal-to-noise ratio with binning size.

Extended Data Figure 2 Emission-line galaxies at z = 0.98.

a, Gaussian fits to the [O ɪɪ] λ = 3,726 Å, λ = 3,729 Å doublets in the MUSE spectra of G1, G2 and G3, the three [O ɪɪ] sources found by our systematic search. The MUSE spatial resolution barely resolves G1 into three [O ɪɪ] clumps (G1-A, G1-B and G1-C), which cluster around zG1 = 0.98235 and have a velocity dispersion of 35 km s−1. b, MUSE image of RCSGA 032727−132623 centred on [O ɪɪ] emission at z = 0.98. The magenta squares indicate the binned spaxels used to map the Mg ɪɪ absorption against the arc. c, HST/WFC3 F814W image zooming into the G1 system. The blue squares indicate the MUSE regions used to extract the [O ɪɪ] spectra. The scale corresponds to the region close to G1 in the absorber plane.

Extended Data Figure 3 Projection of absorber plane against image plane.

In the absorber plane (dashed rectangle), the spaxel configuration appears shrunked and the de-lensed spatial elements have different shapes and areas across the absorber plane. After de-lensing, the scale in the absorber plane is given by the adopted cosmology: 5″ = 39.85 kpc at z = 0.98. The impact parameter used here is defined as the projected physical distance between a given position and G1 on this plane. For reference, a 5″ scale bar is shown in the image plane. Coordinates (α, right ascension; δ, declination) are in arcseconds relative to the position of G1 in the image plane.

Extended Data Figure 4 Effect of partial covering.

a, Cumulative distribution of absorption strengths for two different binnings. b, Same as a but for velocities.

Extended Data Table 1 Mg ɪɪ absorption near G1
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Upper limits on Mg ɪɪ absorption near G2
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 Absorption by Fe ɪɪ and Mg I near G1
Full size table
Extended Data Table 4 Galaxy properties
Full size table

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Lopez, S., Tejos, N., Ledoux, C. et al. A clumpy and anisotropic galaxy halo at redshift 1 from gravitational-arc tomography. Nature 554, 493–496 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25436

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