Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21741202j&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #412.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present the results of the first unbiased, blind survey for Molecular Hydrogen (H2) in high redshift (z 2-4) Damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs). These are the most gas-rich quasar absorption systems and, since they contain the bulk of the neutral gas at high-z, may fuel star formation over much of the Hubble time. But despite H2 being the main molecular coolant and therefore an important ingredient for star formation, its covering fraction in DLAs is unknown, primarily because few H2-bearing DLAs have been found --mostly serendipitously -- and disproportionately high column density (N(HI)) systems have been searched. To better understand the link between DLAs and high-z star formation we measured the H2-bearing DLA fraction and H2 covering fraction by exploiting the excellent UV throughput of the Magellan/MagE spectrograph in a relatively fast, medium resolution survey of 100 DLAs selected without N(HI) bias. We will present the results of this survey. This research is partially supported by the STFC-funded Galaxy Formation and Evolution program at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.
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