Ubiquitous giant lyα nebulae around the brightest quasars at z ∼ 3.5 revealed with muse

Direct Lyα imaging of intergalactic gas at z ∼ 2 has recently revealed giant cosmological structures around quasars, e.g., the Slug Nebula. Despite their high luminosity, the detection rate of such systems in narrow-band and spectroscopic surveys is less than 10%, possibly encoding crucial informati...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Borisova, Elena (Author), Cantalupo, Sebastiano (Author), Lilly, Simon J. (Author), Marino, Raffaella A. (Author), Gallego, Sofia G. (Author), Bacon, Roland (Author), Blaizot, Jeremy (Author), Bouché, Nicolas (Author), Brinchmann, Jarle (Author), Carollo, C. Marcella (Author), Caruana, Joseph (Author), Finley, Hayley (Author), Herenz, Edmund C. (Author), Richard, Johan (Author), Schaye, Joop (Author), Straka, Lorrie A. (Author), Urrutia, Tanya (Author), Verhamme, Anne (Author), Wisotzki, Lutz (Author), Turner, Monica Lisa (Contributor)
Other Authors: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing, 2017-04-06T20:39:40Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
LEADER 02863 am a22003973u 4500
001 107923
042 |a dc 
100 1 0 |a Borisova, Elena  |e author 
100 1 0 |a MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Turner, Monica Lisa  |e contributor 
700 1 0 |a Cantalupo, Sebastiano  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Lilly, Simon J.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Marino, Raffaella A.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Gallego, Sofia G.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Bacon, Roland  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Blaizot, Jeremy  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Bouché, Nicolas  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Brinchmann, Jarle  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Carollo, C. Marcella  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Caruana, Joseph  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Finley, Hayley  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Herenz, Edmund C.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Richard, Johan  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Schaye, Joop  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Straka, Lorrie A.  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Urrutia, Tanya  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Verhamme, Anne  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Wisotzki, Lutz  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Turner, Monica Lisa  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Ubiquitous giant lyα nebulae around the brightest quasars at z ∼ 3.5 revealed with muse 
260 |b IOP Publishing,   |c 2017-04-06T20:39:40Z. 
856 |z Get fulltext  |u http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107923 
520 |a Direct Lyα imaging of intergalactic gas at z ∼ 2 has recently revealed giant cosmological structures around quasars, e.g., the Slug Nebula. Despite their high luminosity, the detection rate of such systems in narrow-band and spectroscopic surveys is less than 10%, possibly encoding crucial information on the distribution of gas around quasars and the quasar emission properties. In this study, we use the MUSE integral-field instrument to perform a blind survey for giant Lyɑ nebulae around 17 bright radio-quiet quasars at 3 < z < 4 that does not suffer from most of the limitations of previous surveys. After data reduction and analysis performed with specifically developed tools, we found that each quasar is surrounded by giant Lyɑ nebulae with projected sizes larger than 100 physical kiloparsecs and, in some cases, extending up to 320 kpc. The circularly averaged surface brightness profiles of the nebulae appear to be very similar to each other despite their different morphologies and are consistent with power laws with slopes ∼1.8. The similarity between the properties of all these nebulae and the Slug Nebula suggests a similar origin for all systems and that a large fraction of gas around bright quasars could be in a relatively "cold" (T ~ 104 K) and dense phase. In addition, our results imply that such gas is ubiquitous within at least 50 kpc from bright quasars at 3 < z < 4 independently of the quasar emission opening angle, or extending up to 200 kpc for quasar isotropic emission. 
546 |a en_US 
655 7 |a Article 
773 |t Astrophysical Journal