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V. P. Kulkarni (Univ. of South Carolina), D. G. York (Univ. of Chicago), B. E. Woodgate (NASA GSFC), P. Palunas (Univ. of Texas, Austin), D. G. Thatte, J. Meiring (Univ. of South Carolina), E. Wassell (St Thomas Aquinas College and the Catholic Univ. of America)
We have carried out a deep narrow-band imaging survey of six fields with heavy-element quasar absorption lines, using the Goddard Fabry Perot system at the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope. The aim of these observations was to search for redshifted Ly-alpha emission from the galaxies underlying the absorbers at z = 2.3-2.5 and their companion galaxies. A few compact sources were discovered, but no significant diffuse Ly-alpha emitters were detected. Our observations suggest that the star formation rates in most of the absorbers in our sample are less than ~1-2 Mo/yr, or that the Lyman-alpha flux is extinguished by dust within the absorber galaxies. We compare our results with those compiled from the literature and with predictions based on models of cosmic chemical evolution.
VPK, DGT, and JM acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-0206197 and from the Univ. of South Carolina Research Foundation.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.