Inspiraling streams of enriched gas observed around a massive galaxy 11 billion years ago

Shiwu Zhang; Zheng Cai; Dandan Xu; Rhythm Shimakawa; Fabrizio Arrigoni Battaia; Jason Xavier Prochaska; Renyue Cen; Zheng Zheng; Yunjing Wu; Qiong Li; Liming Dou; Jianfeng Wu; Ann Zabludoff; Xiaohui Fan; Yanli Ai; Emmet Gabriel Golden-Marx; Miao Li; Youjun Lu; Xiangcheng Ma; Sen Wang; Ran Wang; Feng Yuan

doi:10.1126/science.abj9192

Inspiraling streams of enriched gas observed around a massive galaxy 11 billion years ago

Science. 2023 May 5;380(6644):494-498. doi: 10.1126/science.abj9192. Epub 2023 May 4.

Authors

Shiwu Zhang^#¹, Zheng Cai^#^{1

2}, Dandan Xu¹, Rhythm Shimakawa^{3

4}, Fabrizio Arrigoni Battaia⁵, Jason Xavier Prochaska^{6

7}, Renyue Cen^{8

9}, Zheng Zheng¹⁰, Yunjing Wu¹, Qiong Li^{11

12}, Liming Dou¹³, Jianfeng Wu¹⁴, Ann Zabludoff¹⁵, Xiaohui Fan¹⁵, Yanli Ai¹⁶, Emmet Gabriel Golden-Marx¹, Miao Li¹⁷, Youjun Lu^{18

19}, Xiangcheng Ma²⁰, Sen Wang¹, Ran Wang¹¹, Feng Yuan²¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
² School of Mathematics and Physics, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China.
³ National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan.
⁴ Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Tokyo 169-0051, Japan.
⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, D-85748 Garching bei München, Germany.
⁶ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
⁷ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8583, Japan.
⁸ Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
⁹ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
¹¹ Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
¹² Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
¹³ Department of Astronomy, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
¹⁵ Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
¹⁶ College of Engineering Physics, Shenzhen Technology University, Shenzhen 518118, China.
¹⁷ Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY 10010, USA.
¹⁸ National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
¹⁹ School of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
²⁰ Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Astrophysics Center, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
²¹ Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200030, China.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37141364
DOI: 10.1126/science.abj9192

Abstract

Stars form in galaxies, from gas that has been accreted from the intergalactic medium. Simulations have shown that recycling of gas-the reaccretion of gas that was previously ejected from a galaxy-could sustain star formation in the early Universe. We observe the gas surrounding a massive galaxy at redshift 2.3 and detect emission lines from neutral hydrogen, helium, and ionized carbon that extend 100 kiloparsecs from the galaxy. The kinematics of this circumgalactic gas is consistent with an inspiraling stream. The carbon abundance indicates that the gas had already been enriched with elements heavier than helium, previously ejected from a galaxy. We interpret the results as evidence of gas recycling during high-redshift galaxy assembly.