Lensing, reddening and extinction effects of MgII absorbers from z=0.4 to z=2

TL;DR

This study analyzes the effects of MgII absorbers on background quasars, revealing dust evolution with redshift, a proportionality between dust and absorber strength, and providing corrections for observational biases.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed quantification of dust extinction evolution and its dependence on absorber properties, along with a correction method for selection biases in MgII absorber studies.

Findings

Dust increases with cosmic time following (1+z)^(-1.1 +/- 0.4)

Dust column density scales with W_0^(1.9 +/- 0.2)

No significant gravitational magnification detected, upper limit rac;1.10

Abstract

Using a sample of almost 7000 strong MgII absorbers with 0.4 < z < 2.2 detected in the SDSS DR4 dataset, we investigate the gravitational lensing and dust extinction effects they induce on background quasars. After carefully quantifying several selection biases, we isolate the reddening effects as a function of redshift and absorber rest equivalent width, W_0. We find the amount of dust to increase with cosmic time as (1+z)^(-1.1 +/- 0.4), following the evolution of cosmic star density or integrated star formation rate. We measure the reddening effects over a factor 30 in E(B-V) and we find the dust column density to be proportional to W_0^(1.9 +/- 0.2), which provides an important scaling for theoretical modeling of metal absorbers. We also measure the dust-to-metals ratio and find it similar to that of the Milky Way. In contrast to previous studies, we do not detect any gravitational magnification by MgII systems. We measure the upper limit \mu<1.10 and discuss the origin of the discrepancy. Finally, we estimate the fraction of absorbers missed due to extinction effects and show that it rises from 1 to 50% in the range 1<W_0<6 Angstrom. We parametrize this effect and provide a correction for recovering the intrinsic distribution of absorber rest equivalent widths.