The COS-legacy survey of C iv absorbers: properties and origins of the intervening systems

Abstract

ABSTRACT We present here results from a survey of intervening C iv absorbers at z < 0.16 conducted using 223 sightlines from the Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive. Most systems (83%) out of the total sample of 69 have simple kinematics with 1 or 2 C iv components. In the 22 C iv systems with well constrained H i column densities, the temperatures from the b-values imply predominantly photoionized plasma (T ≤ 105 K) and non-thermal dynamics. These systems also have solar or higher metallicities. We obtain a C iv line density of $\mathrm{ d}\mathcal {N}/\mathrm{ d}X = 5.1\pm 1.0$ for $\log [N(\rm {C}\, \rm {{iv}})~(\rm {cm}^{-2})]\ge 12.9$, and $\Omega _{\rm {C}\, \rm {\rm {iv}}}=(8.01\pm 1.62) \times 10^{-8}$ for $12.9 \le \log [N(\rm {C}\, \rm {{iv}})~(\rm {cm}^{-2})] \le 15.0$. The C iv bearing diffuse gas in the z < 0.16 Universe has a metallicity of (2.07 ± 0.43) × 10−3 Z⊙, an order of magnitude more than the metal abundances in the IGM at high redshifts (z ≳ 5), and consistent with the slow build-up of metals in the diffuse circum/intergalactic space with cosmic time. For z < 0.015 (complete above L > 0.01L⋆), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey provides a tentative evidence of declining covering fraction for strong C iv (N > 1013.5 cm−2) with ρ (impact parameter) and ρ/Rvir. However, the increase at high separations suggests that strong systems are not necessarily coincident with such galaxies. We also find that strong C iv absorption at z < 0.051 is not coincident with galaxy overdense regions complete for L > 0.13L⋆.