Quasars probing quasars. IV. Joint constraints on the circumgalactic medium from absorption and emission

Abstract

We have constructed a sample of 29 close projected quasar pairs where the background quasar spectrum reveals absorption from optically thick H I gas associated with the foreground quasar. These unique sightlines allow us to study the quasar circumgalactic medium (CGM) in absorption and emission simultaneously, because the background quasar pinpoints large concentrations of gas where Lyα emission, resulting from quasar-powered fluorescence, resonant Lyα scattering, and/or cooling radiation, is expected. A sensitive search (1σ surface-brightness limits of ) for diffuse Lyα emission in the environments of the foreground (predominantly radio-quiet) quasars is conducted using Gemini/GMOS and Keck/LRIS slit spectroscopy. We fail to detect large-scale 100 kpc Lyα emission, either at the location of the optically thick absorbers or in the foreground quasar halos, in all cases except a single system. We interpret these non-detections as evidence that the gas detected in absorption is shadowed from the quasar UV radiation due to obscuration effects, which are frequently invoked in unified models of active galactic nuclei. Small-scale R ≲ 50 kpc extended Lyα nebulosities are detected in 34% of our sample, which are likely the high-redshift analogs of the extended emission-line regions (EELRs) commonly observed around low-redshift (z < 0.5) quasars. This may be fluorescent recombination radiation from a population of very dense clouds with a low covering fraction illuminated by the quasar. We also detect a compact high rest-frame equivalent width (W Lyα > 50 Å) Lyα-emitter with luminosity L Lyα = 2.1 ± 0.32 × 1041 erg s -1 at small impact parameter R = 134 kpc from one foreground quasar, and argue that it is more likely to result from quasar-powered fluorescence, than simply be a star-forming galaxy clustered around the quasar. Our observations imply that much deeper integrations with upcoming integral-field spectrometers such as MUSE and KCWI will be able to routinely detect a diffuse Lyα glow around bright quasars on scales R 100 kpc and thus directly image the CGM. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.