An ALMA Early Science survey of molecular absorption lines toward PKS 1830-211 Analysis of the absorption profiles
Journal article, 2014
We present the first results of an ALMA spectral survey of strong absorption lines for common interstellar species in the z = 0.89 molecular absorber toward the lensed blazar PKS 1830-211. The dataset brings essential information on the structure and composition of the absorbing gas in the foreground galaxy. In particular, we find absorption over large velocity intervals (greater than or similar to 100 km s(-1)) toward both lensed images of the blazar. This suggests either that the galaxy inclination is intermediate and that we sample velocity gradients or streaming motions in the disk plane, that the molecular gas has a large vertical distribution or extraplanar components, or that the absorber is not a simple spiral galaxy but might be a merger system. The number of detected species is now reaching a total of 42 different species plus 14 different rare isotopologues toward the SW image, and 14 species toward the NE line-of-sight. The abundances of CH, H2O, HCO+, HCN, and NH3 relative to H-2 are found to be comparable to those in the Galactic diffuse medium. Of all the lines detected so far toward PKS 1830-211, the ground-state line of ortho-water has the deepest absorption. We argue that ground-state lines of water have the best potential for detecting diffuse molecular gas in absorption at high redshift.
Author
Sebastien Muller
Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Onsala Space Observatory
F. Combes
Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
M. Guelin
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)
LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmospheres
M. Gerin
LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmospheres
Susanne Aalto
Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
A. Beelen
University of Paris-Sud
John H Black
Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
S.J. Curran
The University of Sydney
ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO)
J. Darling
University of Colorado at Boulder
D.-V. Trung
Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology
S. G. Burillo
Spanish National Observatory (OAN)
C. Henkel
King Abdulaziz University
Max Planck Society
Cathy Horellou
Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics
S. Martin
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)
Ivan Marti-Vidal
Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Onsala Space Observatory
K. M. Menten
Max Planck Society
M. T. Murphy
Swinburne University of Technology
J. Ott
National Radio Astronomy Observatory Socorro
Tommy Wiklind
Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA)
M. A. Zwaan
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Astronomy and Astrophysics
0004-6361 (ISSN) 1432-0746 (eISSN)
Vol. 566 A112Subject Categories
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Infrastructure
Onsala Space Observatory
DOI
10.1051/0004-6361/201423646