Average [O II] nebular emission associated with Mg II absorbers: Dependence on Fe II absorption

TL;DR

This study examines how Fe II absorption influences the observed [O II] nebular emission in Mg II absorbers, revealing dependencies on fibre size, Fe II strength, and redshift, which impact star formation rate measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates that [O II] luminosity correlates with Fe II absorption strength and fibre size effects, highlighting the importance of considering these factors in star formation studies using Mg II absorbers.

Findings

[O II] luminosity depends on Fe II absorption strength.

Fibre size significantly affects measured [O II] emission.

Mg II absorbers with higher Fe II to Mg II ratio show stronger [O II] emission.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of Fe II equivalent width ($W_{2600}$) and fibre size on the average luminosity of [O II]$\lambda\lambda$3727,3729 nebular emission associated with Mg II absorbers (at $0.55 \le z \le 1.3$) in the composite spectra of quasars obtained with 3 and 2 arcsec fibres in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We confirm the presence of strong correlations between [O II] luminosity (L$_{[\rm O~II]}$) and equivalent width ($W_{2796}$) and redshift of Mg II absorbers. However, we show L$_{[\rm O~II]}$ and average luminosity surface density suffers from fibre size effects. More importantly, for a given fibre size the average L$_{[\rm O~II]}$ strongly depends on the equivalent width of Fe II absorption lines and found to be higher for Mg II absorbers with $R \equiv$ $W_{\rm 2600}/W_{\rm 2796}$ $\ge 0.5$. In fact, we show the observed strong correlations of L$_{[\rm O~II]}$ with $W_{2796}$ and $z$ of Mg II absorbers are mainly driven by such systems. Direct [O II] detections also confirm the link between L$_{[\rm O~II]}$ and $R$. Therefore, one has to pay attention to the fibre losses and dependence of redshift evolution of Mg II absorbers on $W_{2600}$ before using them as a luminosity unbiased probe of global star formation rate density. We show that the [O II] nebular emission detected in the stacked spectrum is not dominated by few direct detections (i.e., detections $\ge 3 \sigma$ significant level). On an average the systems with $R$ $\ge 0.5$ and $W_{2796}$ $\ge 2$ \AA\ are more reddened, showing colour excess E($B-V$) $\sim$ 0.02, with respect to the systems with $R$ $< 0.5$ and most likely traces the high H I column density systems.