Exploring the dust content of SDSS DR7 damped Lyman alpha systems at 2.15$\le z_{ab}< $5.2

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large sample of high-redshift damped Lyman alpha systems from SDSS DR7 to investigate dust content, revealing that a small but significant fraction of DLAs contain substantial dust, especially in certain subsamples.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of dust in SDSS DR7 DLAs across a broad redshift range, highlighting the impact of absorber properties on dust presence and the limitations of color selection.

Findings

Less than 10% of DLAs cause significant reddening

Dusty DLAs have stronger metal absorption lines

Color selection biases underestimate dusty DLA fraction

Abstract

We have studied a sample of 1084 intervening absorption systems with 2.15$\le z_{ab}\le$5.2, having log(N$_{\rm HI}$) $>$ 20.0 in the spectra of QSOs in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data release 7 (DR7), with the aim of understanding the nature and abundance of the dust and the chemical abundances in the DLA absorbers. Composite spectra were constructed for the full sample and several subsamples, chosen on the basis of absorber and QSO properties. Average extinction curves were obtained for the samples by comparing their geometric mean composite spectra with those of two samples of QSOs, matching in z$_{em}$ and i magnitude with the DLA sample, one sample without any absorbers along their lines of sight and the other without any DLAs along their lines of sight irrespective of the presence of other absorption systems. While the average reddening in the DLA sample is small, we find definite evidence for the presence of dust in subsamples based on absorber properties, in particular the strength of metal absorption lines. DLAs along lines of sight to QSOs which are not colour selected are found to be more dusty compared to those along the lines of sight to the more numerous colour selected QSOs. From these studies and from the strengths of absorption lines in the composite spectra, we conclude that $\le$ 10% of the DLAs in SDSS DR7 cause significant reddening, have stronger absorption lines and have higher abundances as compared to the rest of the sample. The rest of the sample shows little reddening. Due to the dominant color selection method used to target QSOs in the SDSS DR7, this fraction of 10% likely represents a lower limit for the global fraction of dusty DLAs at high-z.