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Extreme damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption in young star-forming galaxies at $z=9-11$

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arxiv 2306.00647 v1 pith:YPQWZLKT submitted 2023-06-01 astro-ph.GA astro-ph.CO

Kasper E. Heintz , Darach Watson , Gabriel Brammer , Simone Vejlgaard , Anne Hutter , Victoria B. Strait , Jorryt Matthee , Pascal A. Oesch
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Páll Jakobsson Nial R. Tanvir Peter Laursen Rohan P. Naidu Charlotte A. Mason Meghana Killi Intae Jung Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao Abdurro'uf Dan Coe Pablo Arrabal Haro Steven L. Finkelstein Sune Toft
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abstract

The onset of galaxy formation is thought to be initiated by the infall of neutral, pristine gas onto the first protogalactic halos. However, direct constraints on the abundance of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) in galaxies have been difficult to obtain at early cosmic times. Here we present spectroscopic observations with JWST of three galaxies at redshifts $z=8.8 - 11.4$, about $400-600$ Myr after the Big Bang, that show strong damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption ($N_{\rm HI} > 10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$) from HI in their local surroundings, an order of magnitude in excess of the Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption caused by the neutral intergalactic medium at these redshifts. Consequently, these early galaxies cannot be contributing significantly to reionization, at least at their current evolutionary stages. Simulations of galaxy formation show that such massive gas reservoirs surrounding young galaxies so early in the history of the universe is a signature of galaxy formation in progress.

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Cited by 4 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. OpenAlex reports about 17 citations worldwide. Full citation record

  1. The Impact of Galaxy Overdensities and Ionized Bubbles on Ly$\alpha$ Emission at $z\sim7.0-8.5$

    astro-ph.GA 2025-05 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Strong Lyα emitters at z~7-8.5 are preferentially found in galaxy overdensities comparable in size to predicted ionized bubbles, with the EGS field showing evidence for an unusually large ionized sightline.

  2. ATLAS. II. Extremely High Incidence of Balmer Line Absorption with Predominant Blueshifts in LRDs: Statistical Insights through Comparison with Type 1 AGNs

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Balmer-line absorption occurs in ~35% (14/40) of JWST little-red-dot AGNs, roughly 850x the rate in SDSS type-1 AGNs, with mostly slow blueshifted absorber velocities.

  3. Deep Spectroscopic Follow-Up of Maisie's Galaxy -- A Typical Galaxy in the Early Universe

    astro-ph.GA 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Deep JWST spectroscopy of Maisie's Galaxy at z=11.4 reveals moderate star formation, metallicity, and ionization consistent with a typical galaxy on the early star-formation main sequence rather than an extreme source.

  4. Multi-wavelength Constraints on the Transient EP250905a

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    EP250905a is best explained as a mildly off-axis structured-jet afterglow at z=2.714, possibly weakly magnified by a foreground galaxy at z=0.374.

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