A survey of weak MgII absorbers at redshift <z>=1.78

Abstract

The exact nature of weak MgII absorbers (those with W_r(2796) < 0.3 A) is a matter of debate, but most are likely related to areas of local star formation or supernovae activity outside of giant galaxies. Using 18 QSO spectra obtained with the Ultra-Violet Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), we have conducted a survey for weak MgII absorbers at 1.4 < z < 2.4. We searched a redshift path length of 8.51, eliminating regions badly contaminated by atmospheric absorption so that the survey is close to 100% complete to W_r(2796) = 0.02 A. We found a total of 9 weak absorbers, yielding a number density of absorbers of dN/dz = 1.06 +/- 0.12 for 0.02 <= W_r(2796) < 0.3 A. Narayanan et al. (2005) found dN/dz = 1.00 +/- 0.20 at 0 < z < 0.3 and Churchill et al. (1999) found dN/dz = 1.74 +/- 0.10 at 0.4 < z < 1.4. Therefore, the population of weak MgII absorbers appears to peak at z~1. We explore the expected evolution of the absorber population subject to a changing extragalactic background radiation (EBR) from z = 0.9 to z = 1.78 (the median redshift of our survey), and find that the result is higher than the observed value. We point out that the peak epoch for weak MgII absorption at z~1 may coincide with the peak epoch of global star formation in the dwarf galaxy environment.