Jian Ge et al 2001 ApJ 547 L1 doi:10.1086/318890
Jian Ge1,2, Jill Bechtold1 and Varsha P. Kulkarni1,3
Show affiliationsWe report the detection of strong molecular hydrogen (H2) absorption lines in the z = 2.34 damped Lyα absorber (DLA) toward QSO 1232+0815. This is the second detection in our survey for high-redshift molecules. The new ultraviolet spectrum of the QSO 1232+0815 at 0.9 Å resolution, taken with the Multiple Mirror Telescope Blue Channel Spectrograph, shows the υ = 0-0 up to 10-0 Lyman bands and also the Werner υ = 0-0 band of H2 associated with the z = 2.34 DLA. We have estimated the total H2 column density in this system. It ranges from ≈3 × 1019 cm-2 to ≈3 × 1017 cm-2 depending on the Doppler parameters, b = 6 or 10 km s-1. Based on the best fit with b = 6 km s-1, the estimated kinetic temperature is TK ≈ 80 K. The measurements of the abundance of zinc and iron in the same DLA show that the metallicity measured by the relatively undepleted element zinc is [Zn/H] = -0.86, while the relative abundance ratio [Fe/Zn] is -1.04, indicating dust depletion. Combining our work with previous results on H2 and relative heavy-element depletion, we find that there is a correlation between them, which suggests that the formation of H2 on dust grains is perhaps the dominant formation process in high-redshift DLAs. Detections of strong absorption from the ground and excited states of neutral carbon (C I) in the z = 2.34 DLA are also presented. The excitation temperature between the two fine-structure levels of C I is 15.7 ± 3.5 K, an upper limit for the cosmic microwave background radiation temperature at z = 2.34. This value is consistent with the prediction by the standard big bang cosmology.
cosmic microwave background; dust, extinction; early universe; galaxies: abundances; ISM: molecules; quasars: absorption lines; quasars: individual (QSO 1232+0815)
Issue 1 (2001 January 20)
Received 2000 October 2, accepted for publication 2000 November 7
Published 2001 January 16
Jian Ge et al 2001 ApJ 547 L1
Hans Lundmark and Jacek Szmigielski 2003 Inverse Problems 19 1241
Thomas Nowotny et al 2001 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34 1
Yukiyasu Ozeki 1997 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 9 11171
Xize Niu and Yi-Kuen Lee 2003 J. Micromech. Microeng. 13 454
Qiu Cong-Xin and Xu Ren-Xin 2006 Chinese Phys. Lett. 23 3205
A D Erlykin et al 2002 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 28 2225
J Viallon et al 2006 Metrologia 43 441
Rafael Cortell 2005 Fluid Dyn. Res. 37 231
Rainer W Hasse 2003 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 36 1011