Dissecting the Lyman Alpha Emission Halo of LAB1

TL;DR

This study uses advanced integral-field spectroscopy to analyze the detailed structure and kinematics of the Lyman Alpha Blob 1 in the SSA 22 protocluster, revealing multiple emission regions and complex velocity patterns.

Contribution

It provides a detailed spatial and spectral analysis of LAB1, identifying multiple emission components and examining their association with galaxies and gas dynamics, with improved data quality over previous observations.

Findings

LAB1 consists of five distinct emission blobs.

Two blobs are linked to Lyman Break Galaxies, one to a submillimeter galaxy.

Velocity shear observed, but rotation vs. outflow remains ambiguous.

Abstract

We report observations of Lyman Alpha Blob 1 (LAB1) in the SSA 22 protocluster region (z=3.09) with the integral-field spectrograph SAURON. We increased the signal-to-noise in the spectra by more than a factor three compared to our previous observations. This allows us to probe the structure of the LAB system in detail, examining its structure in the spatial and wavelength dimensions. We find that the emission from the system comes largely from five distinct blobs. Two of the emission regions are associated with Lyman Break Galaxies, while a third appears to be associated with a heavily obscured submillimeter galaxy. The fourth and fifth components do not appear to be associated with any galaxy despite the deep imaging that is available in this field. If we interpret wavelength shifts in the line centroid as velocity structure in the underlying gas, many of these emission systems show evidence of velocity shear. It remains difficult to distinguish between an underlying rotation of the gas and an outflow driven by the central object. We have examined all of the line profiles for evidence of strong absorption features. While several systems are better fitted by the inclusion of a weak absorption component, we do not see evidence for a large-scale coherent absorption feature such as that seen in LAB2.