Coordinated UV-optical observations of quasars: the evolution of the Lyman absorption

Abstract

The average flux decrement shortward the Ly$_α$ emission, due to the well-known ``forest'' of absorptions, has been measured in the spectra of 8 quasars. Quasi-simultaneous optical and IUE observations of the two low redshift quasars PKS 0637--75 (z=0.654) and MC 1104+16 (z=0.632) have been carried out, obtaining relatively high S/N, spectrophotometrically calibrated data on their energy distribution from the rest frame H$_β$ to the Lyman continuum. Six more quasars in the redshift range 2.5-3.4 have been observed in the optical domain. For all the quasars the ``intrinsic'' continuum slope and normalization have been estimated longward the Ly$_α$ emission and extrapolated towards the Lyman continuum to measure the average depressions, which have been compared with the model statistics of the Ly$_α$ clouds. When all the known classes of absorbers are taken into account with plausible values for their equivalent width distribution and evolution, a good agreement is obtained with the observations. The results for the observed continuum decrement at $z \sim 0.65$ are identical to those predicted by the evolution with redshift of the number of Ly$_α$ forest systems including the HST data and within $2σ$ of the predicted value using the ``standard'' Ly$_α$ evolution (as determined only at high z).