We present a theoretical model to predict the properties of an observed z= 5.72 Lyman α emitter galaxy - CIV absorption pair separated by 1384 comoving kpc/h. We use the separation of the pair and an outflow velocity/time travelling argument to demonstrate that the observed galaxy cannot be the source of metals for the CIV absorber. We find a plausible explanation for the metal enrichment in the context of our simulations: a dwarf galaxy with M⋆= 1.87 × 109M⊙ located 119 comoving kpc/h away with a wind velocity of ∼ 100 km/s launched at z∼ 7. Such a dwarf (MUV= - 20.5) is fainter than the detection limit of the observed example. In a general analysis of galaxy - CIV absorbers, we find galaxies with -20.5 <MUV< - 18.8 are responsible for the observed metal signatures. In addition, we find no correlation between the mass of the closest galaxy to the absorber and the distance between them, but a weak anti-correlation between the strength of the absorption and the separation of galaxy - absorber pairs.
@article{arxiv.1704.03473,
title = {Theoretical study of an LAE-CIV absorption pair at z = 5.7},
author = {L. A. García and E. Tescari and E. V. Ryan-Weber and J. S. B. Wyithe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.03473},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted April 10, 2017 in MNRAS