Related papers: The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 1
Strong quasar-galaxy lensing provides a powerful tool to probe the inter-stellar medium (ISM) of the lens galaxy using radiation from the background quasar. Using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope, we…
We present the first measurement of the large-scale cross-correlation of Lyman alpha forest absorption and Damped Lyman alpha systems (DLA), using the 9th Data Release of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The…
We perform a semi-automated survey for tau>=2 Lyman Limit systems (LLSs) in quasar spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Data Release 7. From a starting sample of 2473 quasars with zem=3.6-4.4, we analyze 469 spectra meeting strict…
Using a sample of 21 damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) and 35 sub-DLAs, we evaluate the D-index = EW / Delta v x 1000 from high resolution spectra of the MgII lambda 2796 profile. This sample represents an increase in sub-DLA D-index…
We use spectroscopy of close pairs of quasars to study diffuse gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) surrounding a sample of 40 Damped Lya systems (DLAs). The primary sightline in each quasar pair probes an intervening DLA in the redshift…
We use 211 galaxy spectra from our survey for Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) associated with 11 damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) to measure the three-dimensional LBG auto-correlation and DLA-LBG cross-correlation functions with the primary…
Damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) and sub-DLAs seen toward background quasars provide the most detailed probes of elemental abundances. Somewhat paradoxically these measurements are more difficult at lower redshifts due to the atmospheric…
We present HIRES observations for 30 damped Lyman alpha systems, selected on the basis of their large metal column densities from previous, lower resolution data. The measured metal column densities for Fe, Zn, S, Si, Cr, Mn, and Ni are…
We present a new study of the effects of quasar obscuration on the statistics of Damped Ly alpha (DLA) systems. We show that the extinction of any Galactic or extragalactic HI region increases with the column density of zinc with a turning…
We report a deep search for redshifted HI 21 cm emission from three damped and sub-damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs) at $z \approx 0.1$ with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). No evidence for a redshifted HI 21 cm emission signal was…
Detailed studies of Damped and sub-Damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLA), the galaxies probed by the absorption they produce in the spectra of background quasars, rely on identifying the galaxy responsible for the absorber with more traditional…
The local power law relationship between the surface densities of neutral hydrogen gas and star formation rate (SFR) can be used to explore the SFR properties of damped Lyman alpha (DLA) systems at higher redshift. We find that while the…
We use hydrodynamic cosmological simulations to study damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) and Lyman limit (LL) absorption at redshifts z=2-4 in five variants of the cold dark matter scenario. Our standard simulations resolve the formation of dense…
We present the first spectroscopic measurement of the spatial cross-correlation function between damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) and Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). We obtained deep u'BVRI images of nine QSO fields with 11 known z ~ 3 DLAs…
We present a study of the evolution of the column density distribution, f(N,z), and total neutral hydrogen mass in high-column density quasar absorbers using candidates from a recent high-redshift survey for damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) and…
The goal of the Complete Optical and Radio Absorption Line System (CORALS) survey is to quantify the potential impact on QSO absorber statistics from dust in intervening galaxies. Dust may introduce a selection bias in surveys which are…
We present the first results of an ongoing program to investigate the kinematic characteristics of high redshift damped lya systems. Because damped lya systems are widely believed to be the progenitors of current massive galaxies, an…
Sub-damped Lyman alpha systems (subDLAs; HI column densities of 19.0<=logN(HI)<20.3) are rarely included in the cosmic HI census performed at redshifts z>=1.5, yet are expected to contribute significantly to the overall HI mass budget of…
We detail a powerful indirect method for the study of damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) at low redshift. We increase the probability of finding a low-redshift DLA to nearly 50% by targeting QSOs that are known to have strong low-redshift…
We use simple models of the spatial structure of the quasar broad line region (BLR) to investigate the properties of so-called ghostly damped Lyman-{\alpha} (DLA) systems detected in SDSS data. These absorbers are characterized by the…