J/A+A/556/A141 ESO-UVES Advanced Data Products (EUADP) sample (Zafar+, 2013)
The ESO UVES advanced data products quasar sample.
II. Cosmological evolution of the neutral gas mass density.
Zafar T., Peroux C., Popping A., Milliard B., Deharveng J.-M., Frank S.
<Astron. Astrophys., 556, A141 (2013)>
=2013A&A...556A.141Z 2013A&A...556A.141Z
ADC_Keywords: QSOs ; Redshifts
Keywords: galaxies: abundances - galaxies: evolution - galaxies: high-redshift -
quasars: absorption lines - quasars: general
Abstract:
We present here a dataset of quasars observed with the Ultraviolet
Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the Very Large Telescope and
available in the European Southern Observatory UVES Advanced Data
Products (EUADP) archive. The sample is made up of a total of 250 high
resolution quasar spectra with emission redshifts ranging from
0.191≤zem≤6.311. The total UVES exposure time of this dataset is
1560 h. Thanks to the high resolution of UVES spectra, it is possible
to unambiguously measure the column density of absorbers with damping
wings, down to NHI≳1019cm-2, which constitutes the sub-damped
Lyα absorber (sub-DLA) threshold. Within the wavelength coverage
of our UVES data, we find 150 damped Lyα systems (DLAs)/sub-DLAs
in the range 1.5<zabs<4.7.
Damped absorbers, seen in the spectra of background quasars, are
unique probes to select HI-rich galaxies. These galaxies allow one to
estimate the neutral gas mass over cosmological scales. The neutral
gas mass is a possible indicator of gas consumption as star formation
proceeds. The damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs; NHI≥2x1020cm-2)
and sub-DLAs (1019≤NHI≤2x1020cm-2) are believed to contain a
large fraction of neutral gas mass in the Universe. In aper I of the
series, we presented the results of a search for DLAs and sub-DLAs in
the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Ultraviolet Visual Echelle
Spectrograph (UVES) advanced data products dataset of 250 quasars.
Here we use an unbiased subsample of sub-DLAs from this dataset to
derive their statistical properties. We built a subset of 122 quasars
ranging from 1.5<zem<5.0, suitable for statistical analysis. The
statistical sample was analyzed in conjunction with other sub-DLA
samples from the literature. This resulted in a combined sample of 89
sub-DLAs over a redshift path of Δz=193.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
sample.dat 171 250 Properties of the EUADP quasar sample (table1 of
paper I, Zafar et al., 2013A&A...556A.140Z 2013A&A...556A.140Z)
param.dat 67 373 Complete log of 250 EUADP quasars of which 122
contribute to the statistical EUADP sample
(table1 of paper II)
refs.dat 77 38 References
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: sample.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 17 A17 --- QSO Quasar name
19- 20 I2 h RAh Right ascension (J2000)
22- 23 I2 min RAm Right ascension (J2000)
25- 29 F5.2 s RAs Right ascension (J2000)
31 A1 --- DE- Declination sign (J2000)
32- 33 I2 deg DEd Declination (J2000)
35- 36 I2 arcmin DEm Declination (J2000)
38- 42 F5.2 arcsec DEs Declination (J2000)
44- 48 F5.2 mag mag ?=- Simbad V, B or J magnitude
49 A1 --- n_mag [VBJ] Band for magnitude
51- 55 F5.3 --- zem Emission redshift of the quasar
57-106 A50 --- Cov Wavelength coverage(s) of the spectra
108-161 A54 --- Prog ESO program ID(s)
163-164 I2 --- Ns Number of spectra used for co-adding, where
spectra from BLUE, RED upper and lower arms
are counted separately
166-171 I6 s Texp Total exposure time of each quasar
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: param.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 17 A17 --- QSO Quasar name
19- 23 F5.3 --- zem Emission redshift
25- 29 F5.3 --- zmin ?=- Minimum redshift (1)
30 A1 --- --- [-]
31- 35 F5.3 --- zmax ? Maximun redshift (1)
36 A1 --- n_zmax [s] s for EUADP Sample (2)
37 A1 --- f_zmax [,] , indicates other redshift interval
for the quasar
40- 44 F5.3 --- zLLS ?=- redshift of Lyα-Limit System (LLS)
46- 50 F5.3 --- zabs ?=- DLA/sub-DLA redshift
51 A1 --- n_zabs [s] s for Sample (2)
52- 53 A2 --- l_logNHI [~< ] Limit flag on logLHI
54- 58 F5.2 [cm-2] logNHI ?=- HI column density of DLAs/sub-DLAs
60- 63 F4.2 [cm-2] e_logNHI ? rms uncertainty on logNHI
64 A1 --- f_logNHI [s] s for Sample (2)
66- 67 I2 --- Ref ? Reference for absorber, in refs.dat file
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Note (1): Redshift interval to obtain the redshift path over which the
presence of damped Lyα absorbers (DLA) can be determined.
* The lowest redshift (zmin) is either the lowest redshift at which
the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio ensures the detection of absorption
features at the sub-DLA threshold of EWrest=2.5Å, or where an
intervening Lyman-Limit System (LLS) is present and thus prohibits the
detection of any absorption feature at wavelengths shorter than the
restframe Lyman break (912Å).
* The higher redshift (zmax) is adopted as 3000km/s blueward of the quasar
emission redshift.
Note (2): 's' indicates that redshift path, zabs and NHI of the absorbers
are included in our statistical sample (boldfaced values in the printed
table).
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: refs.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 2 I2 --- Ref Reference number
4- 22 A19 --- BibCode BibCode
24- 48 A25 --- Aut Author's name
50- 77 A28 --- Com Comments
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
References:
Zafar et al., Paper I 2013A&A...556A.140Z 2013A&A...556A.140Z
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 27-Nov-2013