Strong Mg II and Fe II absorbers at 2.2 > z > 6.0

We present a study of strong intervening absorption systems in the near-IR spectra of 31 luminous quasars at z z > 6.0. Each Mg II absorber is confirmed by at least two associated Fe II absorption lines in the rest-frame wavelength range of ∼1600-2600 Å. We find that the comoving line density (dN/dX) of the strong Fe II-bearing Mg II absorbers decreases toward higher redshift at z z > 4, our absorbers are potentially less saturated and show much larger rest-frame velocity widths. This suggests that the gas traced by our absorbers are potentially affected by galactic superwinds. We analyze the Hubble Space Telescope near-IR images of the quasars and identify possible associated galaxies for our strong absorbers. There are a maximum of two galaxy candidates found within 5"radius of each absorber. The median F105W-band magnitude of these galaxy candidates is 24.8 mag, which is fainter than the L*galaxy luminosity at z ∼ 4. By using our observed dN/dX of strong Mg II absorbers and galaxy candidates median luminosity, we suggest that at high redshift, strong Mg II absorbers tend to have a more disturbed environment but smaller halo size than that at z > 1. © 2021. The Author(s).Open access articleThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu