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Metal Enrichment in the Circumgalactic Medium and Lyα Halos around Quasars at z ∼ 3

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Abstract

Deep observations have detected extended Lyα emission nebulae surrounding tens of quasars at redshift 2 to 6. However, the metallicity of such extended haloes is still poorly understood. We perform a detailed analysis on a large sample of 80 quasars at z∼3 based on MUSE-VLT data. We find clear evidence of extended emission of the UV nebular lines CIV and HeII for about 18% of the sample, while CIII] is only marginally detected in a few objects. By stacking the cubes we detect emission of CIV, HeII and CIII] out to a radius of about 45 kpc. CIV and HeII show a radial decline much steeper than Lyα, while CIII] shows a shallower profile similar to Lyα in the inner 45 kpc. We infer that the average metallicity of the circumgalactic gas within the central 30-50~kpc is $\sim0.5solar,orevenhigher.However,wealsofindevidenceofacomponentoftheLy\alpha$ haloes, which has much weaker metal emission lines relative to Lyα. We suggest that the high metallicity of the circumgalactic medium within the central 30-50 kpc is associated with chemical pre-enrichment by past quasar-driven outflows and that there is a more extended component of the CGM that has much lower metallicity and likely associated with near-pristine gas accreted from the intergalactic medium. We show that our observational results are in good agreement with the expectations of the FABLE zoom-in cosmological simulations.

Description

Keywords

High-redshift galaxies, Circumgalactic medium, Quasars

Journal Title

Astrophysical Journal

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0004-637X
1538-4357

Volume Title

898

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
European Research Council (638707)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/N000927/1)
European Research Council (695671)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/S000623/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/J005673/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/K00333X/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/L000636/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/M001172/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/M007065/1)
STFC (ST/M007073/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/P000673/1)
STFC (ST/T00049X/1)
ERC STFC