THE SIZE AND ORIGIN OF METAL-ENRICHED REGIONS IN THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM FROM SPECTRA OF BINARY QUASARS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We present tomography of the circum-galactic metal distribution at redshift 1.7–4.5 derived from echellete spectroscopy of binary quasars. We find C iv systems at similar redshifts in paired sightlines more often than expected for sightline-independent redshifts. As the separation of the sightlines increases from 36 kpc to 907 kpc, the amplitude of this clustering decreases. At the largest separations, the C iv systems cluster similar to the Lyman-break galaxies studied by Adelberger et al. in 2005. The C iv systems are significantly less correlated than these galaxies, however, at separations less than R 1 ≃ 0.42 ± 0.15 h −1 comoving Mpc. Measured in real space, i.e., transverse to the sightlines, this length scale is significantly smaller than the break scale estimated previously from the line-of-sight correlation function in redshift space by Scannapieco et al. in 2006. Using a simple model, we interpret the new real-space measurement as an indication of the typical physical size of enriched regions. We adopt this size for enriched regions and fit the redshift-space distortion in the line-of-sight correlation function. The fitted velocity kick is consistent with the peculiar velocity of galaxies as determined by the underlying mass distribution and places an upper limit on the average outflow (or inflow) speed of metals. The implied timescale for dispersing metals is larger than the typical stellar ages of Lyman-break galaxies, and we argue that enrichment by galaxies at z ⩾ 4.3 played a greater role in dispersing metals. To further constrain the growth of enriched regions, we discuss empirical constraints on the evolution of the C iv correlation function with cosmic time. This study demonstrates the potential of tomography for measuring the metal enrichment history of the circum-galactic medium.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".