Related papers: Quasar Absorption Lines
We briefly review, at a level appropriate for graduate students and non-specialists, the field of quasar absorption lines (QALs). Emphasis is on the intervening absorbers. We present the anatomy of a quasar spectrum due to various classes…
Further investigation of data on quasars, especially in the ultraviolet band, yields an amazingly coherent narrative which we present in this paper. Quasars are characterised by strong continuum emission and redshifted emission and…
The importance of HST for the study of quasar absorption lines and of the nature of the intergalactic medium is illustrated by reviewing selected results from past HST observations. Topics reviewed include the study of Ly-alpha absorbers at…
We analyzed the absorption line spectra of all quasars observed with the high resolution gratings of the Faint Object Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope. We examined 788 spectra for 334 quasars, and present line lists and…
We investigate the metal species associated with the Ly$\alpha$ forest in the eBOSS quasar spectra. Metal absorption lines are revealed in the stacked spectra from cross-correlating the selected Ly$\alpha$ absorbers in the forest and the…
Quasar absorption lines have long been recognized to be a sensitive probe of the abundances, physical conditions, and kinematics of gas in a wide variety of environments including low-density intergalactic regions that probably cannot be…
The proximity effect of metal line absorption systems in spectra of high redshift quasars and quasar pairs is investigated through the distribution of \Lyalpha forests. No strong proximity effect is found down to 500 km/sec away from a…
We present a new method for probing the physical conditions and metal enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium: the composite spectrum of Ly-alpha forest absorbers. We apply this technique to a sample of 9480 Ly-alpha absorbers with redshift…
Quasar absorption lines provide detailed information on the chemical, kinematic, and ionization conditions in galaxies and their environments, and provide a means for studying the evolution of these conditions back to the epoch of the first…
Determining when and how the first galaxies reionized the intergalactic medium (IGM) promises to shed light on both the nature of the first objects and the cosmic history of baryons. Towards this goal, quasar absorption lines play a unique…
Eighteen candidates for emission line galaxies were discovered in a narrow-band infrared survey that targeted the redshifts of damped Lyman-alpha or metal lines in the spectra of quasars. The presence of emission lines is inferred from the…
Spectra of quasars result primarily from interactions of natural light with atomic hydrogen. A visible absorption of a sharp and saturated spectral line in a gas requires a low pressure, so a long path without blushing as a cosmological…
The last few years have seen a dramatic improvement in our understanding of the origin of Lyman alpha absorption systems. Hydrodynamic numerical simulations of cold dark matter dominated universes have shown that the many properties of the…
The properties of the Lyman-$\alpha$ absorptions observed in the spectra of QSOs are reviewed: the distribution of column densities and Doppler widths, the redshift evolution, the ``inverse effect'', the clustering. By interpreting the…
Absorption signatures in the spectra of QSOs are one of our most powerful tools for studying galactic and intergalactic environments at high redshifts. With the discovery of QSOs out to z > 7, QSO absorption lines are now tracing the end…
We review observations of molecular absorption line systems at high redshift toward red quasars and gravitational lenses.
It is difficult to describe in a few pages the numerous specific techniques used to study absorption lines seen in QSO spectra and to review even rapidly the field of research based on their observation and analysis. What follows is…
Observations of redshifted Lyman alpha forest absorption in the spectra of quasistellar objects (QSOs) provide a highly sensitive probe of the distribution of gaseous matter in the universe. Over the past two decades optical spectroscopy…
We present a new catalog of absprption-line systems identified in the quasar spectra. It contains data on 821 QSOs and 8558 absorption systems comprizing 16139 absorption lines with measured redshifts in the QSO spectra. The catalog…
We present results of surveys for high redshift galaxies selected by their having produced detectable Mg~II and Lyman limit absorption in the spectra of background QSOs. We discuss the properties of the absorbing galaxies, the connection…