MgII Absorption at 2 < z < 6 with Magellan / FIRE. II: A Longitudinal Study of HI, Metals, and Ionization in Galactic Haloes

TL;DR

This study investigates the evolution of HI and metal absorption in MgII systems from redshift 2 to 6, revealing increased HI strength and metallicity at higher redshifts, with implications for galaxy evolution and gas accretion.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed comparison of high and low redshift MgII absorbers, highlighting their evolving properties and metal enrichment over cosmic time.

Findings

Higher HI column densities at z~3.4 compared to z~1.

Most high-redshift MgII systems are DLAs or sub-DLAs.

Weak MgII systems at high redshift are metal-rich and similar to low-redshift counterparts.

Abstract

We present a detailed study of HI and metals for 110 MgII absorption systems discovered at 1.98 <= z <= 5.33 in the infrared spectra of high redshift QSOs. Using new measurements of rest-frame UV lines from optical spectra of the same targets, we compare the high redshift sample with carefully constructed low redshift control samples from the literature to study evolutionary trends from z=0 --> 5.33 (>12 Gyr). We observe a significant strengthening in the characteristic N(HI) for fixed MgII equivalent width as one moves toward higher redshift. Indeed at our sample's mean zbar=3.402, all MgII systems are either damped Ly-alpha absorbers or sub-DLAs, with 40.7% of systems exceeding the DLA threshold (compared to 16.7% at zbar=0.927). We set lower limits on the metallicity of the MgII systems where we can measure HI; these results are consistent with the full DLA population. The classical MgII systems (W(2796)=0.3-1.0 Ang), which preferentially associate with sub-DLAs, are quite metal rich at ~0.1 Solar. We applied quantitative classification metrics to our absorbers to compare with low redshift populations, finding that weak systems are similar to classic MgII absorbers at low redshift. The strong systems either have very large MgII and FeII velocity spreads implying non-virialized dynamics, or are more quiescent DLAs. There is tentative evidence that the kinetically complex systems evolve in similar fashion to the global star formation rate. We speculate that if weaker MgII systems represent accreting gas as suggested by recent studies of galaxy-absorber inclinations, then their high metal abundance suggests re-accretion of recently ejected material rather than first-time infall from the metal-poor IGM, even at early times.