[C ii] 158-μm emission from the host galaxies of damped Lyman-alpha systems.
Gas surrounding high-redshift galaxies has been studied through observations of absorption line systems toward background quasars for decades. However, it has proven difficult to identify and characterize the galaxies associated with these absorbers due to the intrinsic faintness of the galaxies compared with the quasars at optical wavelengths. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, we report on detections of [C ii] 158-μm line and dust-continuum emission from two galaxies associated with two such absorbers at a redshift ofz~ 4. Our results indicate that the hosts of these high-metallicity absorbers have physical properties similar to massive star-forming galaxies and are embedded in enriched neutral hydrogen gas reservoirs that extend well beyond the star-forming interstellar medium of these galaxies.
University of California Observatories-Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. marcel@ucsc.edu.
Marcel
0000-0002-9838-8191
M
Neeleman
National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune University, Pune 411007, India.
Nissim
0000-0002-9757-7206
N
Kanekar
University of California Observatories-Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
J Xavier
0000-0002-7738-6875
JX
Prochaska
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Marc
0000-0002-9946-4731
M
Rafelski
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM 87801, USA.|Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 19 J. J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK.
Chris L
0000-0001-6647-3861
CL
Carilli
Department of Physics and Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92063, USA.
Arthur M
AM
Wolfe