{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/a-long-stream-of-metal-poor-cool-gas-around-a","title":"A Long Stream of Metal-Poor Cool Gas around a Massive Starburst Galaxy at z = 2.67","arxiv_id":"2101.06273","date":"2021-01-15","proceeding":null,"authors":["Hai Fu","Rui Xue","J. Xavier Prochaska","Alan Stockton","Sam Ponnada","Marie Wingyee Lau","Asantha Cooray","Desika Narayanan"],"abstract":"We present the first detailed dissection of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of massive starburst galaxies at z > 2. Our target is a submillimeter galaxy (SMG) at z = 2.674 that has a star formation rate of 1200 $M_\\odot$/yr and a molecular gas reservoir of $1.3\\times10^{11} M_\\odot$. We characterize its CGM with two background QSOs at impact parameters of 93 kpc and 176 kpc. We detect strong HI and metal-line absorption near the redshift of the SMG towards both QSOs, each consisting of three main subsystems spanning over 1500 km/s. The absorbers show remarkable kinematic and metallicity coherence across a separation of 86 kpc. In particular, the cool gas in the CGM of the SMG exhibits high HI column densities ($\\log N_{\\rm HI}/{\\rm cm}^{-2} = 20.2, 18.6$), low metallicities ([M/H] $\\approx$ -2.0), and similar radial velocities ($\\approx$ -300 km/s). While the HI column densities match previous results on the CGM around QSOs at z > 2, the metallicities are lower by more than an order of magnitude, making it an outlier in the line width$-$metallicity relation of damped Ly$\\alpha$ absorbers. The large physical extent, the velocity coherence, the high surface density, and the low metallicity are all consistent with the cool, inflowing, and near-pristine gas streams predicted to penetrate hot massive halos at z > 1.5. We estimate a total gas accretion rate of ~100 $M_\\odot$/yr from three such streams, which falls short of the star formation rate but is consistent with simulations. At this rate, it takes about a gigayear to acquire the molecular gas reservoir of the central starburst.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06273v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.06273v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"a-long-stream-of-metal-poor-cool-gas-around-a","repo_url":"https://github.com/fuhaiastro/data","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}