Detection of hot, metal-enriched outflowing gas around $z\approx\,$2.3 star-forming galaxies in the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey

TL;DR

This study uses quasar absorption lines to detect hot, metal-enriched outflows around star-forming galaxies at redshift 2.3, revealing gas that is collisionally ionized with high metallicity extending up to 350 km/s.

Contribution

First demonstration of hot, collisionally ionized, metal-enriched outflows around high-redshift star-forming galaxies using absorption line analysis.

Findings

Enhanced OVI absorption indicates hot, metal-rich outflows.

Outflows extend up to approximately 350 km/s from galaxies.

Gas metallicity is at least 10% of solar, indicating significant enrichment.

Abstract

We use quasar absorption lines to study the physical conditions in the circumgalactic medium of redshift $z\approx 2.3$ star-forming galaxies taken from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS). In Turner et al. 2014 we used the pixel optical depth technique to show that absorption by HI and the metal ions OVI, NV, CIV, CIII and SiIV is strongly enhanced within $|\Delta v|\lesssim170$ km/s and projected distances $|d|\lesssim180$ proper kpc from sightlines to the background quasars. Here we demonstrate that the OVI absorption is also strongly enhanced at fixed HI, CIV, and SiIV optical depths, and that this enhancement extends out to $\sim350$ km/s. At fixed HI the increase in the median OVI optical depth near galaxies is 0.3-0.7 dex and is detected at 2--3-$\sigma$ confidence for all seven HI bins that have $\log_{10}\tau_{\rm HI}\ge-1.5$. We use ionization models to show that the observed strength of OVI as a function of HI is consistent with enriched, photoionized gas for pixels with $\tau_{\rm HI}\gtrsim10$. However, for pixels with $\tau_{\rm HI} \lesssim 1$ this would lead to implausibly high metallicities at low densities if the gas were photoionized by the background radiation. This indicates that the galaxies are surrounded by gas that is sufficiently hot to be collisionally ionized ($T > 10^5\,$K) and that a substantial fraction of the hot gas has a metallicity $\gtrsim 10^{-1}$ of solar. Given the high metallicity and large velocity extent (out to $\sim1.5\times v_{\rm circ}$) of this gas, we conclude that we have detected hot, metal enriched outflows arising from star-forming galaxies.