A deep imaging survey of fields around quasars with Z less than 1.2 MG II absorption systems

Details A deep imaging survey of fields around quasars with Z less than 1.2 MG II absorption systems A deep imaging survey of fields around quasars with Z less than 1.2 MG II absorption systems

Nov 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993a%26a...279...33l&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 279, no. 1, p. 33-52

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

47

Absorption Spectra, Dwarf Galaxies, Galactic Clusters, Galactic Evolution, Galactic Halos, Magnesium, Quasars, Sky Surveys (Astronomy), Astronomical Photometry, Cosmology, Image Processing, Imaging Techniques, Statistical Analysis

Scientific paper

The high success rate of identification of galaxies causing Mg II absorption in quasar spectra suggests that Mg II absorbers are associated with bright field galaxies with large gaseous halos of radius R approximately 3 to 4 RH. An alternative origin for the absorption could be in clustered groups of dwarf galaxies. To investigate further the nature of the galaxies responsible for for quasar absorption systems, we have conducted a deep imaging survey in the r band at the Canada-France-Hawaii (CFH) telescope of 12 fields around quasars with 17 Mg II at redshift za less than 1.2 with an average detection limit mr(3 sigma sky) = 25.0. For the 14 confirmed Mg II absorption systems, there is always an absorber candidate in the absolute magnitude range -23.0 less than or equal to Mr(za) less than or equal to -19.5 at a linear separation from the quasar sight-line l less than 4RH except in one case for which l approximately 4.4RH. Whilst for individual fields this result is not conclusive, a statistical analysis shows that the probablility to get such a correlation by chance for our combined fields is very low, approximately 0.1%. We find neither evidence for an overdensity of dwarf galaxies within 3.5 RH of the QSO image nor in most fields any departure at larger linear scales of the galaxy surface density distribution from a Poissonian distribution at the 99% confidence level. This lack of clustering of dwarf galaxies around most quasar sight-lines at small or intermediat scales argues against the suggestion that dwarf galaxies within small groups are responsible for the absorption. The presence of very rich, high redshift clusters of galaxies centered on the quasar image is excluded by the consistency between the differential magnitude-counts for our combined fields and those obtained in other studies of fields devoid of bright objects.

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