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The Contribution of HI-rich Galaxies to the Damped Lyman-alpha Absorber Population at z=0

Jessica L. Rosenberg·Stephen E. Schneider
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Abstract

We present a study of the expected properties of the low redshift damped Lyman-alpha absorber population determined from a sample of HI-selected galaxies in the local universe. Because of a tight correlation between the HI mass and HI cross-section, which we demonstrate spans all galaxy types, we can use our HI-selected sample to predict the properties of the absorption line systems. We use measurements of the number density and HI cross-section of galaxies to show that the total HI cross-section at column densities sufficient to produce damped Lyman-alpha absorption is consistent with no evolution of the absorber population. We also find that the dN/dz distribution is dominated by galaxies with HI masses near 10^9 Msolar. However, because of the large dispersion in the correlation between HI mass and stellar luminosity, we find that the distribution of dN/dz as a function of L_J is fairly flat. Additionally, we examine the line widths of the HI-selected galaxies and show that there may be evolution in the kinematics of HI-rich galaxies, but it is not necessary for the higher redshift population to contain a greater proportion of high mass galaxies than we find locally.

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Jessica L. Rosenberg, Stephen E. Schneider. 2002-11-04. The Contribution of HI-rich Galaxies to the Damped Lyman-alpha Absorber Population at z=0. https://doi.org/10.1086/345979

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