The association between gas and galaxies I: CFHT spectroscopy and pair analysis

Abstract

We investigate the relative distribution of the gaseous contents of the Universe (as traced by a sample of Lyman alpha (lya) absorbers), and the luminous baryonic matter (as traced by a redshift survey of galaxies in the same volume searched for lya absorbers), along 16 lines-of-sight (LOS) between redshifts 0 and 1. Our galaxy redshift survey was made with the Multi-Object Spectrograph (MOS) on Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and, when combined with galaxies from the literature in the same LOS, gives us a galaxy sample of 636 objects. By combining this with an absorption line sample of 406 absorbing systems drawn from published works, we are able to study the relationship between gas and galaxies over the latter half of the age of the Universe. A correlation between absorbers and galaxies is detected out to separation of 1.5 Mpc. This correlation is weaker than the galaxy-galaxy correlation. There is also some evidence that the absorbing systems seen in CIV are more closely related to galaxies, although this correlation could be with column density rather than metallicity. The above results are all consistent with the absorbing gas and the galaxies co-existing in dark matter filaments and knots as predicted by current models, where the column density of the absorbing gas is correlated with the underlying matter density.