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The CIV-MgII Kinematics Connection in <z>~0.7 Galaxies

C. W. Churchill, R. R. Mellon, J. C. Charlton, B. T. Jannuzi, S. Kirhakos, C. C. Steidel, D. P. Schneider

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9904273

Abstract

We have examined Faint Object Spectrograph data from the Hubble Space Telescope Archive for CIV 1548,1550 absorption associated with 40 MgII 2796,2803 absorption-selected galaxies at 0.4 < z < 1.4. We report a strong correlation between MgII kinematics, measured in 6 km/s resolution HIRES/Keck spectra, and Wr(1548); this implies a physical connection between the processes that produce &#34;outlying velocity&#34; MgII clouds and high ionization galactic/halo gas. We found no trend in ionization condition, Wr(1548)/Wr(2796), with galaxy-QSO line-of-sight separation for 13 systems with confirmed associated galaxies, suggesting no obvious ionization gradient with galactocentric distance in these higher redshift galaxies. We find tentative evidence (2-sigma) that Wr(1548)/Wr(2796) is anti-correlated with galaxy <B-K> color; if further data corroborate this trend, in view of the strong CIV-MgII kinematics correlation, it could imply a connection between stellar populations, star formation episodes, and the kinematics and ionization conditions of halo gas at z~1.

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