# Galaxy Formation and the Kinematics of Damped Ly𝛼 Systems

## 1 Introduction

The highest column density Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption systems observed in quasar spectra offer a powerful technique to investigate the structure and evolution of high density clouds of neutral hydrogen that must have been present at the sites where galaxies formed. Observations show that $`20\%`$ of the lines of sight to high-redshift quasars ($`z3`$) contain an absorption system with column density $`N_{\mathrm{HI}}>2\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (the generally adopted column density threshold for classifying an absorber as a “damped” system), with the number per unit redshift increasing slowly with $`z`$, and probably decreasing at $`z>3`$ for high column densities (Wolfe et al. 1993; Storrie-Lombardi et al. 1996). These systems contain most of the neutral hydrogen in the universe, although most of the ionized hydrogen is probably in lower density structures. The total neutral hydrogen contained in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems at high redshift is similar to the mass presently contained in stars, and accounts for $`10\%`$ of the baryonic density predicted from primordial nucleosynthesis (Storrie-Lombardi et al. 1996; Lanzetta et al. 1991). The abundance of heavy elements is only $`Z10^2Z_{}`$ at $`z3`$, and increases at lower redshifts to a mean of $`Z0.1Z_{}`$ at $`z=1`$, although with a large scatter (Lu et al. 1996; Pettini et al. 1994). The observational evidence on the physical size of the absorbing systems is still scant; a few observations of associated $`21\mathrm{cm}`$ absorption or Ly$`\alpha `$ emission indicate overall sizes of the systems of $`10h^1\mathrm{Kpc}`$ or larger, but with significant clumpiness on smaller scales (Briggs et al. 1989; Wolfe et al. 1992; Djorgovski et al. 1996; Djorgovski 1997; but see also Moller & Warren 1998).

The generic framework whereby these observations have been interpreted in recent years is that of the models of structure formation by gravitational collapse of primordial fluctuations. Although a theory of the origin of these fluctuations that can predict the power spectrum does not yet exist (the various cosmological models normally used are based on the assumption that a hypothetical process, such as the quantum fluctuations of a field driving inflation, gives rise to perfectly scale-invariant and Gaussian fluctuations), a large body of observational evidence has accumulated pointing to a hierarchical theory where dark matter halos collapse from primordial fluctuations, starting on small scales at high redshifts and merging on larger scales later. This hierarchical scenario is a generic consequence of the presence of any type of dark matter than can collapse on small scales (i.e., “cold” dark matter), with a power spectrum of density fluctuations that does not abruptly decrease at some special “smoothing” scale. The evidence for models of this type includes the observed hierarchical nature of galaxy clustering and the galaxy peculiar velocity field (e.g., Strauss & Willick 1995), the presence of substructure in galaxy clusters indicating that clusters formed recently from mergers of smaller units (e.g., Bird 1994), the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest at high redshift showing the structures on small scales that were collapsing in the past (Rauch et al. 1997 and references therein), and the CMB fluctuations (White, Scott, & Silk 1994).

The formation of galaxies in a hierarchical picture occurs in dark matter halos where the cooling time of the gas is sufficiently short. The gas can then dissipate its energy and concentrate in the centers of halos (White & Rees 1978). In general, halos where galaxies can form have velocity dispersions approximately in the range $`30300\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. In smaller halos, the temperature of the photoionized gas is sufficiently high to prevent collapse and efficient cooling (e.g., Thoul & Weinberg 1996; Navarro & Steinmetz 1997). Larger halos have a cooling time that is too long at the time when they collapse, so they contain clusters of preexisting galaxies (e.g., Ostriker & Rees 1977).

Analytic models and cosmological simulations have shown that the observed amount of gas in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems can originate from the cooled gas in halos of galactic scale. The fraction of baryons that collapse in halos and can efficiently cool can account for the observed mass in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems in most models (Mo & Miralda-Escudé 1994, Kauffmann & Charlot 1994, Ma & Bertschinger 1994, Katz et al. 1996, Gardner et al. 1997a,b), as long as a large fraction of the collapsed gas in these halos can remain in atomic form (requiring the gas to be dense enough to be shielded from the ionizing background, but not turning rapidly to molecular gas or stars). The low metallicities of damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems at $`z3`$ (Lu et al. 1996) also suggest that most of the gas that dissipates in halos at high redshift does not quickly turn to stars, but remains atomic for a long time. The gas may form rotating disks, as in spiral galaxies, or may also be distributed more irregularly in the halo as a consequence of frequent merging (see Haehnelt, Steinmetz, & Rauch 1998).

The fundamental physical process that governs the formation of galaxies is the dissipation of gas in dark matter halos. The absorption systems offer us an excellent way to observe the gas that is undergoing this process. Several key questions connecting the observations and the theory emerge here: What is the column density of the absorption systems containing the gas in the process of dissipating most of the energy that needs to be lost to form galaxies? Are the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems the site of most of the dissipation, or are they stable rotating disks where gas accumulates after having already dissipated its energy as a lower column density system? Can we measure the rate of dissipation from observations? Theoretical models of the damped absorbers have so far focused on the total observed amount of neutral hydrogen and its distribution in column density as a tool to constrain cosmological models of structure formation; but can we also test whether the neutral hydrogen is located in halos with the predicted distribution of velocity dispersions?

The answer to these questions requires kinematic studies of the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems. Recently, Prochaska & Wolfe (1997, hereafter PW1) presented an analysis of high-resolution observations of 17 metal line absorption systems associated with damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems. Prochaska & Wolfe (1998, hereafter PW2) expanded the sample to a total of 31 systems. The velocity structure of the gas can be inferred from the unsaturated absorption profiles of low-ionization species, which can be reasonably assumed to have a constant fractional abundance throughout the self-shielded region of the absorption system. In this paper we shall construct a simple model of the multiple absorbers in the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, based on a spherical distribution of halo clouds, to interpret these observations and to relate them to the questions we have asked above. Our model is presented in §2. In §3 we use the observations of the kinematics of damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems to estimate the rate at which energy should be dissipated; we also present an analytic model to approximately compute the amount of energy that can be gained by the absorbing gas owing to the collapse and mergers of galaxies in dark matter halos. The comparison of our model predictions to observations is done in §4.

## 2 Model

Damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems are often interpreted as large rotating disks of gas that are the progenitors of disk galaxies (e.g., Wolfe 1995). Although it is indeed expected that rotating disks will form in halos of galactic scales (following rapid dissipation with conservation of angular momentum; e.g., Fall & Efstathiou 1980), obviously the gas must first move through the halo in order to form disks. If the dissipation process takes a substantial time, much of the observed gas in damped systems at high redshift could still be undergoing dissipation at a large radius in halos, where rotational support is not important. In fact, if we assume that most of the baryons in a spherical halo with circular velocity $`V_c`$ are in the form of neutral hydrogen (self-shielded from the external ionizing background), accounting for a fraction $`f_b`$ of the total halo mass, with a density profile $`\rho _{HI}r^2`$, the column density at impact parameter $`b`$ is $`N_{HI}=5.5\times 10^{21}f_b(V_c/100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)h[(1+z)/4]^{3/2}(r_{vir}/b)\mathrm{cm}^2`$, where $`r_{vir}=V_ct/(2\pi )`$ is the virial radius, defined as the radius containing a mean density $`178\rho _{crit}`$ (we use $`h=H_0/(100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1)`$, and $`t=2/(3H_0)(1+z)^{3/2}`$, for the case $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$). Clearly, for a baryon fraction $`f_b0.1`$, the column densities of damped systems ($`N_{HI}>2\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) can be reached even at the outermost regions of virialized halos if the baryons are not very centrally concentrated relative to the dark matter.

The possibility that the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems are largely associated with halo gas clouds has been proposed by Haehnelt et al. (1998), based on hydrodynamic cosmological simulations where it is indeed found that much of the gas in halos has not had time to settle to a rotating configuration in equilibrium, owing to the high frequency of mergers. Here, we shall study a simple analytic model to understand the origin of this result in terms of the rate at which energy can be dissipated, and to relate the observed kinematics to predictions of cosmological models.

The model we shall use in this paper for the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems consists of two different parts. The first part specifies the mass distribution of the dark matter halos where the damped absorbers are assumed to originate, given a cosmological model for the primordial density fluctuations; the second is the modeling of the gaseous absorbers within each halo. For the first part, we adopt the Press-Schechter formalism (Press & Schechter 1974; Bond et al. 1991), incorporating the usual cosmological parameters and the power spectrum $`P(k)`$. We use the parameter $`\delta _{c,t}=1.69`$ (with a top-hat filter) for the threshold overdensity required to form a halo (see, e.g., Gross et al. 1997 for a recent investigation of the required value of $`\delta _{c,t}`$ to fit the results of numerical simulations). For the second part, our model for the gas distribution within a halo is a spherically symmetric exponential profile for the mean gas density, but with the gas distributed in discrete internal components. The internal model will be completely specified after four quantities are fixed: the core radius $`r_g`$ of the distribution of gas clouds, the fraction of baryons in the halo $`f_{HI}`$ which are in gas clouds, the cloud covering factor per unit path length $`c(𝐱)`$ along a line of sight, and the internal cloud velocity dispersion $`\sigma _i`$. These parameters will be fixed by observational quantities as far as possible. Artificial spectra through random lines of sight in halos will then be generated, containing superposed absorption components, and they will be analyzed in the same way as the observed spectra in PW to test the model against the observed statistical properties of the absorbers.

### 2.1 Internal Gas-Cloud Model

For each halo of mass $`M`$ in the Press-Schechter formalism, we adopt the dark matter density profile of Navarro, Frenk, & White (1996 & 1997, hereafter NFW). The radius $`r_{200}`$ of the halo is defined by $`M=200\rho _{crit}(4/3)\pi r_{200}^3`$, and the circular velocity by $`V_c^2=GM/r_{200}`$ (the relation to $`r_{vir}`$ used above is $`r_{vir}=1.04r_{200}`$; notice that $`V_c^2=GM/r_{vir}`$ is often used, but the difference is small). We use the procedure of NFW to specify the internal parameters of this profile, following the steps outlined in their Appendix.

Our model for the collapsing gas consists of assuming that in each halo in the Press-Schechter formalism with a given $`V_c`$, there is a spherically symmetric system of gas clouds that are moving randomly and are responsible for the individual absorption components observed in the metal-line profiles. PW claimed that a system of clouds in a spherical halo is not consistent with the metal absorption profiles, which are often asymmetric, and that rotation in a flattened disk is needed. We shall find that in fact, these absorption profiles do not provide an unequivocal signature of a rotating system, in agreement with Haehnelt et al. (1998), and that a spherical model is consistent with the data. The clouds are assumed to contain all the observed neutral hydrogen, accounting for a fraction $`f_{HI}`$ of the total baryon mass of the halo, but occupying a small fraction of the volume in the halo. They may be pressure-confined by a hot medium, as in Mo (1994) and Mo & Miralda-Escudé (1996), or they may be gravitationally confined, or may originate in satellites that are being disrupted (Morris & van den Bergh 1994; Wang 1993). We choose the following model for the mean density profile of the gas $`\rho (r)`$ (the internal gas density in an individual cloud should of course be higher by the inverse of the volume filling factor):

$$\rho (r)=\rho _o\mathrm{exp}(r/r_g),$$
(1)   
where $`r_g`$ is a core radius. The parameters $`r_g`$ and $`f_{HI}`$ need to be adjusted to reproduce the observed column density distribution of damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems.

### 2.2 Fitting the Observed Column Density Distribution

The parameters we fit directly are $`c_gr_g/r_{200}`$ and $`f_{HI}`$. We assume that, at a fixed redshift, the two parameters are constant for all halos with different $`V_c`$, but they depend on redshift. The observations to be matched are the fraction of the critical density in the form of atomic gas in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, which we denote as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$, and the incidence rate of absorbers per unit redshift. These are shown in Figures 1 and 2, respectively, from the results of Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1996).

To fit the two parameters at a given redshift, we first compute the impact parameter in a halo where the column density is equal to the threshold for an absorber to be considered a damped system ($`N_{min}=2\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$), as a function of $`V_c`$, and then compute the incidence rate and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ by integrating over $`V_c`$ the mass of gas within this impact parameter and the cross section of every halo. The integration is carried out from a minimum value $`V_{\mathrm{min}}`$ to infinity. It is expected that in very small halos, with $`V_c50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the collapse of the photoionized gas will be suppressed by the gas pressure, preventing the formation of damped absorption systems (e.g., Efstathiou 1992; Quinn, Katz, & Efstathiou 1996; Thoul & Weinberg 1996; Navarro & Steinmetz 1997). We normally use the cutoff $`V_{min}=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, and find the values of $`f_{HI}`$ and $`c_g`$ that give the observed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ and incidence rate for every possible normalization of the power spectrum in each model.

As the normalization of the power spectrum is lowered, the number of massive halos in the model decreases until the fraction $`f_{HI}`$ reaches unity at some redshift. This usually happens first at the highest redshift points in Figure 1 and 2, and it indicates that the model does not have enough power to explain the observed amount of mass in damped systems. At this point, we fix the parameter $`f_{HI}=1`$, and decrease $`V_{min}`$ to lower values until the model prediction reaches the lower end of the $`1\sigma `$ error bar in Figure 1. As we shall see in §4, as the normalization is lowered the models fail the new kinematic tests we present later before it is necessary to reduce $`V_{min}`$ (i.e, before $`f_{HI}`$ reaches unity). Thus, our constraints on the cosmological models including the observations of the kinematics of the absorbers in PW are superior to the previous ones, which were based only on the total amount of neutral hydrogen contained in the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems.

### 2.3 Generation of the Velocity Profiles

Once the parameters $`c_g`$ and $`f_{HI}`$ are fixed at a given redshift, we make random realizations of spectra of absorption systems in the following way. The circular velocity of the halo, $`V_c`$, is chosen from the Press-Schechter distribution, and a random line of sight through the halo is selected. We then generate absorption systems (“clouds”) along the line of sight, with probability per unit length equal to $`c(𝐱)`$, and column density $`N_{HI}=\rho (𝐱)/c(𝐱)`$. The quantity $`c(𝐱)`$ here is the covering factor, a new parameter of the model that will be described in detail in §3. Once the individual clouds are generated, we first check that the total column density is larger than $`N_{min}=2\times 10^{20}\mathrm{cm}^2`$; if it is not, the line of sight is rejected. Velocities of each cloud are then generated from a Gaussian distribution, with dispersion equal to the local velocity dispersion at the radius of the cloud, calculated from Jeans’ equations and assuming an isotropic velocity dispersion (a more exact procedure would be to construct the phase space density of clouds depending only on the energy, but we adopt our more simple model; notice that the assumption of a steady-state distribution is also not exact, due to the on-going merging and dissipation). We assume the clouds move in the potential well of the dark matter halo plus their own mass density, although in practice the contribution of the gas to the gravitational potential is negligible in the models that satisfy the observational requirements. The dark matter profile is that of NFW, which is a good fit to the halo profiles obtained from numerical simulations. Each cloud in a realization is assumed to produce an absorption component with a Gaussian velocity distribution (due to internal thermal or turbulent velocities), with velocity dispersion $`\sigma _i=4.3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, as in PW. This value of $`\sigma _i`$ gives a good fit to the typical widths of the absorption components. We have verified that the full Monte Carlo procedure produces a column density distribution that closely matches the observed one.

## 3 The Dissipation Rate in Damped Ly$`\alpha `$ Systems

The velocity structure of the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, as revealed in associated metal absorption lines, can generally be modeled as the superposition of one or a few absorption components. If these components are due to clouds moving in a halo, this implies that the clouds should undergo collisions with each other several times in every orbit around the halo, because along the path of the motion of an individual cloud within the halo several clouds should be intersected, just as is the case for a random line of sight. <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1In a rotating system of clouds, some of the velocity dispersion along a line of sight may be contributed by a variation of the rotational velocity within the system rather than a local dispersion in velocities, but as we shall see later the contribution of rotation is generally not much larger than that of the local dispersion. In every such collision, a large fraction of the kinetic energy in the center-of-mass frame of the colliding clouds is converted to thermal energy in a shock and then radiated. The multiple absorbing components often have similar contributions to the total column density of the system, and therefore a large fraction of the total kinetic energy of the clouds must be dissipated every orbital time. Since the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems also contain a large fraction of the collapsed baryons in the universe, we conclude that the amount of energy being dissipated in the absorption components of damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems is necessarily very large. The smaller the absorption regions are, the faster the dissipation rate because the orbital times are shorter.

It needs to be said here that the “clouds” in our model are only supposed to be a concept that helps to define a simple approximate interpretation of the observations. In reality, the neutral gas may well have a continuous density distribution, and the cloud collision rate in our model would then represent the frequency of strong shocks in the gas, where the thermal energy produced should be rapidly radiated away.

This large energy dissipation rate in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems is our motivation to propose the following hypothesis: damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems are the site where most of the negative gravitational potential energy of the baryons in galaxies was dissipated when galaxies formed, and the gas in these systems is in the process of dissipating this energy. Given this assumption, we develop in this section a method to predict the covering factor of the absorption components. This hypothesis will be further discussed at the end of the paper in light of the results to be presented in §4. In the rest of this section, we calculate the rate of energy release in a halo due to mergers and the rate at which energy is dissipated in cloud collisions. The two rates must be equated under the proposed hypothesis.

### 3.1 Rate of energy generation by gravitational collapse.

In the absence of dissipation, gas should be shock-heated to the halo virial temperature and should settle to a density profile similar to that of the dark matter (e.g., Navarro et al. 1995). Dissipation causes the gas to become more concentrated than the dark matter. The gas profile in our model is fixed to the form in equation (1), and is indeed required to be more concentrated than the dark matter to fit the observed neutral hydrogen column density distribution. It is straightforward to calculate the difference in energy between the two configurations of the gas. Initially, the gas and dark matter are assumed to be in the same (NFW) profile and the total energy of the system is $`E_1`$. A fraction $`f_{HI}`$ of the gas then collapses into the profile in equation (1). The dark matter distribution also contracts as a result, as required by adiabatic invariance. The resulting system has energy $`E_2`$. The difference between initial and collapsed energies must be the total energy that has been dissipated in this halo:

$$E_d=(E_2E_1).$$
(2)   
The energies are calculated using

$$E=\frac{G}{4}\frac{M^2}{r_{200}}+_0^{r_{200}}\left[\frac{M(r)}{r}\right]^2𝑑r,$$
(3)   
with $`M(r)`$ the total mass (gas plus dark matter) inside radius $`r`$. For the NFW profile this yields

$$E_1=\frac{GM^2}{2r_{200}}f_c,$$
(4)   
with

$$f_c=\frac{c}{2}\left[\frac{11/(1+c)^22\mathrm{ln}(1+c)/(1+c)}{c/(1+c)\mathrm{ln}(1+c)}\right],$$
(5)   
where $`c=r_{200}/r_s`$ is the concentration parameter of the NFW profile (Mo, Mao, & White 1998). This parameter depends on the formation time of the halo as described in Navarro et al. (1997). The dark matter density as a function of radius is

$$\rho _{NFW}=\frac{\rho _\mathrm{c}\delta _c}{r/r_s(1+r/r_s)^2},$$
(6)   
with

$$\delta _c=\frac{200}{3}\frac{c^3}{\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(1+c\right)c/\left(1+c\right)\right]}.$$
(7)   
The energy after collapse is calculated using the assumed exponential gas profile, and the dark matter profile is calculated using adiabatic invariance,

$$M(r)r=M(r_i)r_i.$$
(8)   
Here, $`M(r)`$ is the total mass inside the shell of radius $`r`$ after collapse, $`r_i`$ is the initial radius of the dark matter shell which has contracted to radius $`r`$, and $`M(r_i)`$ is the total mass initially within this radius (when the gas and dark matter had the same NFW profile). With the additional equation (required by mass conservation)

$$M(r)=M(r_i)(1f_bf_{HI})+M_g(r),$$
(9)   
where $`M_g(r)`$ is the gas mass inside radius $`r`$, we can solve for $`r_i`$, $`M(r_i)`$ and $`M(r)`$ for a given radius $`r`$. Finally, the energy can be found by integrating equation (3). Notice that we have assumed here that only a fraction $`(1f_bf_{HI})`$ of the mass undergoes the collapse to the profile of the observed atomic gas. The rest of the baryons (a fraction $`1f_{HI}`$) might be in stars or dense molecular clouds, and may undergo its own loss of energy during mergers. The interaction of this other baryonic component with the atomic gas can be very complex: the dense molecular gas may transmit some energy to less dense gas through shocks. In addition, the gravitational energy of galaxies in merging halos can generally be given off to less dense dark matter and gas through dynamical friction. Here, we need to neglect these processes for simplicity. Numerical simulations should be useful in investigating the possible importance of these effects.

We now use an extension of the PS model (Bower 1991; Lacey & Cole 1993) to compute the rate of energy production from gravitational collapse in each halo. Lacey & Cole (1993) give the average rate of merging of a halo of mass $`M_0`$ with a halo of mass $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ to form a halo of mass $`M=M_0+\mathrm{\Delta }M`$:

$$\frac{d^2p}{d\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Delta }Mdt}(M_0,M)=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left|\frac{d\delta (t)}{dt}\right|\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }M}{\sigma _M^2}\left|\frac{d\sigma _M}{dM}\right|\frac{1}{\left(1\sigma _M^2/\sigma _{M_0}^2\right)^{3/2}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\delta (t)^2}{2}\left(\frac{1}{\sigma _M^2}\frac{1}{\sigma _{M_0}^2}\right)\right],$$
(10)   
where $`\delta (t)=1.69/D(t)`$ is the threshold for collapse, $`(\sigma _M,\sigma _{M_0})`$ are the present $`rms`$ overdensity in linear theory inside a sphere containing mean mass $`(M,M_0)`$, and $`D(t)`$ is the linear growth factor normalized to unity at the present time. Fits for $`\sigma _M`$ are taken from Ma (1996) and Navarro et al. (1997). The comoving number density of halos of mass $`M`$ is given by

$$\frac{dn}{dM}=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\frac{\rho _0}{M}\frac{\delta (t)}{\sigma _M^2}\left|\frac{d\sigma _M}{dM}\right|\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\delta (t)^2}{2\sigma _M^2}\right],$$
(11)   
where $`\rho _0`$ is the mean density of the universe.

The mean rate of energy delivered to a halo of mass $`M`$ by gravitational collapse can be written as

$$M\frac{d(E_d/M)}{dt}=\frac{E_d}{t}|_M+_{M/2}^M\left\{\left[E_d(M)E_d(M_0)E_d(\mathrm{\Delta }M)\right]\frac{d^2p}{d\mathrm{\Delta }Mdt}(M_0)\frac{dn}{dM}(M_0)dM_0\right\}\left[\frac{dn}{dM}(M)\right]^1,$$
(12)   
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=MM_0`$. The first term in equation (12) is the average rate of variation of the energy for a halo of constant mass, and the second gives the mean increase in the energy due to the probability that the halo of mass $`M`$ merged from halos of mass $`M_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$. The first term includes the change with time of the fit parameter $`c_g(z)`$, the concentration parameter of the NFW profile $`c(z)`$, and $`r_{200}`$, all for a fixed mass $`M`$. In practice, the second term in equation (12) is more important than the first, owing to the rapid increase of the velocity dispersion of collapsed halos at high redshift.

### 3.2 Rate of energy dissipation by the gas.

We now calculate the energy dissipation rate due to cloud collisions. Assuming perfectly inelastic collisions of clouds of equal mass $`m`$, moving at velocities $`𝐯_1`$ and $`𝐯_2`$, the energy lost in a collision is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E=\frac{m}{4}|𝐯_1𝐯_2|^2.$$
(13)   
We assume the velocity distribution function for the clouds to be

$$f(𝐱,𝐯)=\frac{n(𝐱)}{[\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma (𝐱)]^3}e^{v^2/(2\sigma ^2(𝐱))},$$
(14)   
where $`\sigma (𝐱)`$ is the velocity dispersion at any point $`𝐱`$ in the halo. If $`s(𝐱)`$ is the cross section for cloud collisions, and $`n(𝐱)=\rho (𝐱)/m`$ is the cloud number density, the rate of energy loss per unit volume in cloud collisions at point $`𝐱`$ is

$`P(𝐱)=s(𝐱){\displaystyle d^3𝐯d^3𝐯^{}f(v)f(v^{})\frac{m}{4}|𝐯𝐯^{}|^2|𝐯𝐯^{}|}`$ (15)   
$`={\displaystyle \frac{8}{\sqrt{\pi }}}\rho (𝐱)s(𝐱)n(𝐱)\sigma ^3(𝐱),`$   
and the total rate of energy dissipation in the halo is

$$\frac{dE}{dt}=P(𝐱)d^3𝐱.$$
(16)   
We choose the cross section so that the mean time between collisions $`\tau _c`$ for any given cloud is constant throughout the halo, i.e., $`n(𝐱)s(𝐱)\sigma (𝐱)=\mathrm{constant}\tau _c^1`$. The rate of energy dissipation can then be rewritten as

$$\frac{dE}{dt}=\frac{8}{\sqrt{\pi }}\tau _c^1\rho (𝐱)\sigma ^2(𝐱)d^3𝐱.$$
(17)   
This can be compared to the rate of energy generation computed in §3.1. The model also specifies the covering factor of the absorbers, $`c(𝐱)=[\tau _c\sigma (𝐱)]^1`$. Random realizations of the absorption spectra are computed as described in §2.3, adding absorbers along a random line of sight with probability per unit length $`c(𝐱)`$ and column density $`N_{HI}=\rho (𝐱)\sigma (𝐱)\tau _c`$.

## 4 Results

In the previous two sections we have presented a generic spherical halo model for absorbing clouds in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems. The spherical model completely specifies the properties of the absorbing clouds in a given halo, as a function of four parameters: the fraction of baryons in neutral gas $`f_{HI}`$, the radius of the cloud distribution $`r_g`$, the internal cloud velocity dispersion $`\sigma _i`$ (which will be fixed to $`\sigma _i=4.3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ throughout this paper), and the covering factor of clouds. For any large-scale structure theory specifying the number of halos with circular velocity $`V_c`$ at every redshift, we can calculate any desired property of the absorption profiles by fitting the values of $`f_{HI}`$ and $`r_g`$ to the observed mass and incidence rate of the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, for different values of the parameter $`\tau _c`$ in §3.2 determining the covering factor of the clouds. We can then see if the value of $`\tau _c`$ derived from the energy balance results in a cloud covering factor consistent with observation.

### 4.1 Fit Values for $`f_{HI}(z)`$ and $`c_g(z)`$

Our first step is to fit for $`f_{HI}(z)`$ and $`c_g(z)r_g/r_{200}`$. Figure 1 shows the observed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ in three models (the differences are the result of the different pathlengths for a fixed redshift range in different models), and Figure 2 shows the observed incidence rate we use, from Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1996) (the solid curve is their power-law fit to the data). The cosmological models we use are defined in Table 1; all the models have $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.05`$, $`h=0.65`$, and $`n=1`$. We have taken fitting formulae for the power spectra from Ma (1996) and Navarro et al. (1997). The normalization of the power spectra (parameterized as usual by $`\sigma _8`$) will be varied for all models.

The values of $`f_{HI}`$ and $`c_g`$ at different redshifts are shown in Figure 3 for the case of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with $`\sigma _8=0.9`$.

We also give the values of $`f_{HI}`$ and $`c_g`$ at $`z=2`$ and $`z=4`$ for all the models in Table 1. The normalization is the one required to fit the present cluster abundances according to Eke et al. (1996) and Ma (1996). In general, $`f_{HI}`$ and $`c_g`$ grow with redshift, in agreement with the reasonable expectation that at earlier epochs a greater fraction of the baryons should be in atomic gas, with a more extended distribution in the halos.

### 4.2 Energy Generated Through Gravitational Collapse

The results in this Section are generally computed from randomly generated absorption profiles of the low-ionization metal lines in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, according to the model of clouds in a spherical halo described previously. The spectra of absorption systems are generated in groups of 27, at the same redshifts as the 27 absorbers in “Sample C” of PW2, in order to compare the model predictions with the observations of PW2. Values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ and the incidence rate are interpolated in redshift from the points in Figures 1 and 2, to obtain $`c_g`$ and $`f_{HI}`$ at each redshift. Gaussian distributed noise is added to each absorption system with an amplitude corresponding to the signal-to-noise for this redshift system (given by PW). Finally, following PW, the absorption profiles are smoothed by a top-hat window 9 bins wide. We show later in Figure 9 an example of 27 random absorbers for a model that agrees with the observations.

Figure 4 is an example of the rate of energy production per unit mass from gravitational collapse as a function of halo size $`V_c`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. The rate $`Wd(E_d/M)/dt`$ is computed using equation (12). We define the unit $`W_0=10^{50}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{yr}^1/(10^{12}M_{})`$ to facilitate comparisons between this rate of energy generation and other possible sources; for example, if a supernova explosion injects $`10^{51}`$ergs of energy, $`W_0`$ corresponds to one supernova per ten years in a halo of mass $`10^{12}M_{}`$.

We now make a test of our hypothesis that the energy dissipated in cloud collisions in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems is provided by gravitational accretion, as explained in §3. Equating the energy generation rates in equations (12) and (17), we obtain the parameter $`\tau _c`$ which determines the covering factor, or the typical number of components in the randomly generated absorbers. Following PW1, for each of the simulated absorption profiles we identify the point of maximum optical depth, $`\tau _1`$, as the first peak. If the optical depth has other maxima, we say there is a second peak if the next highest maximum has optical depth $`\tau _2>\tau _1/3`$ and if $`\tau _2`$ is at least a $`3\sigma `$ feature above the minimum optical depth in the velocity interval between the two peaks. Here $`\sigma `$ is the noise level of each of the 27 observed spectra.

Of the 27 systems in PW2, 10 had a second peak. We have randomly generated 200 sets of 27 absorption profiles for every model in Table 1. We find that the mean number of systems (out of 27) in each set with a second peak is typically $`1`$. This means that the energy computed from gravitational collapse (Fig. 4) is not sufficient to support the multicomponent structure of the observed velocity profiles. When we match the rates of energy generation from gravitational collapse with the rates of energy dissipation by cloud collisions, we find that the line profiles are almost exclusively single Gaussians with $`\mathrm{\Delta }v20\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The amount of energy provided by gravitational collapse is far too small to provide the energy dissipated in a cloud collision at every orbital time, so most lines of sight intersect only one cloud. This result is independent of the cosmological model we adopt. Different cosmological models cause only slight modifications of the rate of energy injection per unit mass $`W`$.

A point that needs to be made here is that the model of a rotating disk may not greatly alleviate the requirement of a fast dissipation rate of the kinetic energy contained in the absorbing clouds. This requirement was not considered in the disk models of PW, because their models were not dynamically self-consistent: the disks of clouds were required to be thick and cold at the same time, so that the relative velocities of clouds on a random line of sight were dominated by the variation of the rotational velocity along the line of sight. In a dynamically self-consistent disk, the clouds must have the vertical velocity dispersion that is determined by the vertical gravity in the disk. In the limiting case where the vertical component of gravity is determined by a spherically symmetric dark matter halo and the disk mass is negligible, the vertical velocity dispersion is $`\sigma _z=V_ch/(2^{1/2}R)`$, where $`h`$ is the scale-height and $`R`$ the radius in the disk. The radial and azimuthal velocity dispersions should generally not be smaller than $`\sigma _z`$. The dispersion in the projected component of the circular velocity along the line of sight, within the interval where the line of sight is contained within a height $`h`$, is $`V_ch/(2R\mathrm{tan}i)`$, where $`i`$ is the inclination of the line of sight from the disk plane (we have assumed here a constant $`V_c`$ with radius as observed in most disk galaxies, but the answer is not very sensitive to reasonable changes in the rotation curve). If the angle $`i`$ is not very small, rotation cannot decrease the local velocity dispersion of the clouds compared to the observed line of sight velocity dispersion by a large factor. Moreover, any effects of rotation on the morphology of the absorption profile will necessarily have to be washed out to a significant degree by the internal cloud velocity dispersion. If self-gravity of the disk is important, $`\sigma _z`$ increases, making the cloud velocity dispersion more important than rotation. A possibility that needs to be examined more carefully is that most cases of multiple absorbing components in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems correspond to lines of sight intersecting a disk with $`i1`$; excepting this possibility, rotational velocities cannot predominate over the internal cloud velocity dispersion in yielding the observed line of sight velocities.

### 4.3 Energy Injection from Other Sources

In general, sources of energy other than the gravitational collapse of structure may exist to maintain the random motion of the clouds in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, such as the energy from supernova explosions when stars form in a galaxy. Simple estimates (e.g., Bookbinder et al. 1980) show that the total energy liberated in supernova explosions when a large fraction of the gas turns to stars is sufficient to heat the remaining gas to temperatures $`10^7`$ K. Even if a large fraction of the supernova energy is lost in radiation, it is clear that if a wind can be blown into the halo after episodic starbursts, supernovae could be important in replenishing the kinetic energy in the motion of the halo clouds, since the typical relative velocities among the absorption components are $`100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, corresponding to virial temperatures of only $`10^6`$ K. A greater supply of energy can support more cloud collisions, and thus a more frothy, high covering factor structure for the density distribution. This higher covering factor leads to a more complete sampling of the underlying velocity distribution, which produces larger velocity widths in the absorbers.

We can parameterize this uncertainty by defining a rate of energy injection per unit mass, $`W_+`$, which we add to the rate of energy generation from gravitational merging in equation (12). Notice that, by adding a constant $`W_+`$ to all halos, we increase the rate of energy injection by a much larger factor in small halos, because small halos have a lower gravitational energy per unit mass due to their small velocity dispersion, and they also accrete much less matter than large halos. The results for the fraction of simulated sets of 27 systems with more than 10 systems with a second peak (for the SCDM model) are shown in Figure 5, as a function of $`W_+`$.

We see that the energy injection rate required for consistency with the observed number of components is of order $`W_0`$.

The effect of increasing the number of components on the observed velocity widths \[defined in equation (19)\] is shown in Figure 6 (for the SCDM model).

The velocity widths are also consistent with observations for the same range of the rate of energy injection $`W_+`$. All the models require the extra energy injection to agree with the observed velocity widths. Figures 7 and 8 show in more detail the effect on the distribution of velocity widths of the rate of energy injection in our model. In most of the models that have the right amplitude of density fluctuations on cluster scales to fit observations of large-scale structure, the halos where damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems arise are generally massive enough to explain the observed velocity widths, given their velocity dispersions. What is more difficult is to understand the source of the energy that keeps the high level of turbulence of the gas.

The implication of the result that energy injection is necessary will be discussed further below. For now we will assume that there is some arbitrary amount of extra energy available and compare our model to the observations using this assumption. Unfortunately this makes our model less constraining because it introduces another free parameter.

### 4.4 Overview of the Simulated Absorption Spectra

An example of a set of 27 absorption spectra is shown in Figure 9, for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model in Table 1 with normalization $`\sigma _8=1.0`$, and energy injection rate $`1.8W_0`$.

This figure can be compared directly with observed spectra in PW. Only the optical depth is shown here, with arbitrary normalization. Without energy injection, the spectra do not resemble the observed ones at all because they are dominated by single Gaussian profiles. But the spectra with energy injection bear remarkable similarity to the observed profiles, as far as one can tell by simple eyeball examination. Notice that our model is extremely simplified; for example, we have assumed that every individual component has a Gaussian profile with a fixed width. In spite of this, the match to the observations is very good. We should bear in mind that two parameters have been adjusted to fit the observations of the kinematics of the absorbers, the width $`\sigma _i`$ and the energy injection parameter $`W_+`$ ($`f_{HI}`$ and $`r_g`$ are fit only to the independent observational data of the HI column density distribution). Nevertheless, the fact that the two parameters are enough to match the kinematic data and that both the velocity widths and the covering factor agree with observations for the same value of the energy injection rate (as shown in Figs. 5 and 6) is reassuring.

### 4.5 Feasibility of Spherical Halo Models

PW claimed to have shown that spherical halo models were ruled out by the observed kinematics of the absorption components, specifically by the fact that the components often show an asymmetric distribution of velocity. Our analysis here will yield a different result. We show that spherical halo models do not have serious difficulty passing the shape tests of PW, as long as enough freedom is allowed in the distribution of halo circular velocities and the number of clouds at different radii. We need to emphasize here that we are not proposing that the real absorption systems are part of exactly spherical halos. A reasonable presumption is that the gas in the damped absorbers is supported partly by rotation and partly by random motions within a spheroidal halo, with rotation possibly becoming more important in the center, where a disk may form. But given the present observations, we shall show that the simple spherical model is still consistent with them and is useful to capture the essential physical properties of the absorbers. This suggests that it may be difficult to find an unambiguous signature of rotation using only absorption spectra in single lines of sight.

The statistical tests we use are fully described in PW, but we shall summarize them here. First, one defines the velocity width $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ of every absorber as that of the interval containing 90% of the column density of the absorber (leaving 5% on each side; here column density refers simply to the integrated optical depth of the low-ionization absorption line being used). The Mean-Median test statistic is

$$f_{mm}=\frac{|v_{mean}v_{med}|}{(\mathrm{\Delta }v/2)},$$
(18)   
where $`v_{mean}`$ is the midpoint of the velocity interval, and $`v_{med}`$ is the median velocity (i.e., the point which has half the column density on either side). The Edge-Leading test statistic is

$$f_{edg}=\frac{|v_{pk}v_{mean}|}{(\mathrm{\Delta }v/2)},$$
(19)   
where $`v_{pk}`$ is the velocity with the maximum optical depth (i.e., the first peak, as defined previously). The Two-Peak test statistic is

$$f_{2pk}=\pm \frac{|v_{pk2}v_{mean}|}{(\mathrm{\Delta }v/2)},$$
(20)   
where $`v_{pk2}`$ is the velocity of the second peak, and the negative sign is used if the second peak is on the opposite side of the mean velocity from the first peak. The second peak is defined as previously. As we have seen, very often there is no second peak, and in this case the location of the first peak is used in its place.

In Figure 5 of PW2, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test probabilities for their different statistics and models are shown. Their “IH” (isothermal halo) model is ruled out by the velocity test and the “two-peak” test. However, the results of the same tests for our models, given in Table 2, indicate that

the simulated lines are consistent with the observed ones based on all the tests used by PW. So why does the model of PW fail the test? The velocity test obviously fails because they chose to give all of their halos an internal velocity dispersion of 190 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, and then fixed the number of components to ten. Thus, the velocity width was generally close to the interval containing 90% of the column density in a Gaussian profile, $`3.4\times 190\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1600\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The assumptions they made were too restrictive to reach any general conclusion on the feasibility of a spherical model.

Another comparison can be made between the joint distributions of column density and velocity in our model and in the observations. Figure 10 shows our model predictions for the SCDM model along with the observed systems of PW.

This figure can be compared directly to Figure 16 of PW2. The 2-dimensional KS test probability for this comparison is 42%. The distributions of column densities and velocity widths are approximately independent in the model and the observations. Attempts to model these systems in the future must keep this comparison in mind. For example, a model with a thin but very dense disk surrounded by a halo of low column density clouds could produce an anti-correlation between column density and velocity width. A line of sight that hit the disk would be dominated by the one high column density component, while lines of sight which only passed through the halo would have lower column density with multiple components and a large $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$.

Haehnelt, Steinmetz, & Rauch (1998) found that absorption profiles drawn from hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation also pass the tests of PW (a preliminary comparison suggests that distinguishing our model from their simulations using these shape tests would require many more observed systems). They found that their structure was produced by a mixture of rotation, random motion, infall, and merging. While the morphology of the multiple absorption components is of interest, we agree with their conclusion that these tests of the details of the velocity structure are not currently very constraining. We also emphasize their point that KS probabilities must be used with care. They rule out only the specific model they are applied to, including any details of the model that are unrelated to the main question of the presence or absence of rotation. The KS probabilities for tests of the kind we have used here should be sensitive to changes we could make in the details of the model such as the distribution of cloud column densities at a given radius, a distribution of internal velocity dispersions, spatial correlations of clouds, etc.

### 4.6  Absorption Velocity Widths: Constraints on the Power Spectrum

Previously, lower limits on the amplitude of the power spectrum were set from the total gas content of the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, using the fact that the photoionization of the gas accreting on galaxies leads us to expect that only halos above a certain mass can harbor damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (see Efstathiou 1992, Thoul & Weinberg 1996, Navarro & Steinmetz 1997). Figure 1 shows examples of the traditional constraints (e.g., Mo & Miralda-Escudé 1994) on the normalization of the power spectrum for the models in Table 1 using the observed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{HI}`$ at different redshifts. Now we can use the observations of the velocity widths to set more stringent limits, since we have a better knowledge of the internal velocities of the halos where the collapsed gas is contained. Of course, the velocity widths depend on the internal structure of the cloud model, but they are highly constrained by the underlying distribution determined by the dark matter.

We found previously that without energy injection, no model can reproduce the observed velocity widths. Figure 6 shows the fraction of realizations of the 27 observed systems which display a median velocity width in excess of the observed $`77\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for the SCDM model. Each of the plotted points was computed with at least 200 realizations. We take the energy injection rate at which the model produces the observed median velocity width in less than 5% of the realizations to be “ruled out”, though of course it is only ruled out in the sense that we have defined it.

The ideal test to discriminate among cosmological models is not necessarily to compare the distribution of velocity widths of all the systems over a wide redshift range, because the models predict that the halos with high velocity dispersion are particularly rare at high redshift. Thus, a few observed systems with high velocity at the highest available redshifts may provide a particularly stringent constraint. In Figure 11, we plot the probability that the median velocity width of the five highest redshift systems ($`z=3.736`$, 3.859, 4.08, 4.203, and 4.383) is greater than the observed value, $`148\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model as a function of its normalization.

Due to the small number of systems, and the a posteriori nature of the test, we say that the model is “ruled out” only if the probability for this test falls below $`1\%`$. For this model we find that the lower limit to the power spectrum normalization that satisfies this test is $`\sigma _8<0.8`$. This is a strong test because the original $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ test is at the highest possible redshifts ($`z>4`$). When a model is close to failing the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_g`$ test, the halo distribution is dominated by the smallest halos, producing low velocity widths.

We have analyzed all the models in Table 1, generating 200 realizations of the 27 systems and computing the probability of obtaining the median velocity width and the number of multicomponent lines of the observations. For every model, the highest normalization which is “ruled out” is determined from one of three conditions: either the model must yield a probability less than 0.05 to exceed the observed median $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ of all 27 systems, or less than 0.01 to exceed the median $`\mathrm{\Delta }v`$ of the five highest redshift systems, or less than 0.05 of having no more than 10 of the 27 profiles with a second peak. Figure 12 shows the resulting constraints for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. Constraints are obtained on both the energy injection rate and the power spectrum normalization $`\sigma _8`$. The upper constraint on $`W_+`$ is derived from the requirement that the model can produce enough profiles without a second peak (there are 17 of these in the data), and the lower constraint originates from the requirement that the model can produce the observed median velocity width. The lower bound on $`\sigma _8`$ is in practice the result of the requirement that the high redshift velocities can be produced.

We find that the constraints on the energy injection rate do not depend strongly on the cosmological model.

The constraints we find on $`\sigma _8`$ for each model are listed in Table 3.

We have listed the values of $`\sigma (HR=100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1,z=4)`$ to show that the difference between models is accounted for by the difference in fluctuation amplitudes on the typical scale of the halos which can produce the high redshift velocities in each model. Because the lower bound on $`\sigma _8`$ comes from the high redshift test, we use roughly the median $`\mathrm{\Delta }v=148\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ of the the five highest redshift systems (median $`z4`$), which corresponds to $`HR=87\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. This shows that in the context of our absorber model, $`\sigma (HR=100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1,z=4)0.78`$ is a lower bound on the power spectrum normalization which is fairly independent of the cosmological model.

### 4.7 Impact Parameters

Our simple model of spherical halos of clouds for the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems makes a clear prediction for the impact parameters of the absorbers from the centers of their host halos, once the core radius parameter $`r_g`$ is determined from the observed incidence rate and the covering factor of the clouds is known to be in agreement with observations. Essentially, this prediction is a consequence of the abundance of halos predicted by the Press-Schechter model, and our assumption that the high column densities associated with the damped systems originate in the centers of these halos.

We show in Figure 13 a scatter plot of the velocity width and the impact parameter for 5400 simulated absorption systems, for the SCDM model with $`\sigma _8=0.7`$ and $`W_+=1.8W_0`$.

The two adjacent panels on the right and top of the figure show the cumulative distribution of the two variables separately. We notice first of all that we predict that most of the systems have very small impact parameters, of order a few Kpc. This is in contrast to the well known result that very large sizes are required when damped systems are assumed to originate in spiral galaxies with the present abundance (e.g., Lanzetta et al. 1991). Small sizes are required in our model because the majority of absorption systems arise in low-mass halos with $`V_c100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, and at high redshift these halos are much more abundant than the present luminous galaxies. A halo with $`V_c=50\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ at $`z=3`$ has a virial radius $`r_{vir}10\mathrm{Kpc}`$, and as we discussed at the beginning of §2, the gas does not need to collapse by a large factor in one of these halos after virialization to reach the column densities of damped systems. Thus, the small impact parameters are largely a consequence of the small sizes of the host halos.

The predicted parameters in the numerical simulation of Katz et al. (1996) were slightly larger than ours. One of the reasons should be that halos with $`V_c100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ were not resolved in this numerical simulation. Our predictions appear to be consistent with the observed impact parameters compiled by Moller & Warren (1998).

Figure 13 also shows there is a long and substantial tail of systems with large impact parameters. These tend to have small velocity widths. In our model, the high impact parameter systems arise from massive halos with large virial radii. However, at high impact parameter the mean column density is low, implying that clouds reaching the threshold column density of damped absorption have a very small covering factor, and are therefore seen most often as individual absorption components; hence their small velocity widths. It needs to be pointed out here that the detailed distribution of impact parameters is not to be considered a robust prediction, since it depends on our choice for the mean gas profile in equation (1).

The distribution of impact parameters is expected to vary with redshift. At lower redshift, halos are larger due to the older age of the universe and to the increasing velocity dispersions. Figure 14 gives the expected evolution of sizes for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model.

The sizes are indeed predicted to increase somewhat between $`z=2.5`$ and $`z=1.5`$, but the change is small from $`z=4`$ to $`z=2.5`$. The reason is that, according to the results of Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1996), the median column density of the absorbers decreases with redshift from $`z=4`$ to $`z=2`$, implying that our parameter $`r_g/r_{vir}`$ needs to increase with redshift over the same range (see Fig. 3). This seems consistent with the simple idea that, at high redshift, the gas in virialized halos should have a more extended distribution within the virial radius, because the process of dissipation had not yet proceeded very far.

## 5 Conclusions

A model of the multiple absorbing components in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems has been presented, based on randomly moving clouds in spherical halos. We have found that the model can account for the observed kinematic properties reported by PW. Whereas PW claimed that their observations required the presence of a rotating system, we find that a spherically symmetric system cannot be ruled out. The distribution of the multiple components in the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems seems to match that expected for a random system of clouds, with the strongest absorbing component being located at a random position within the absorbing interval. It must be noted that even for a random spherical system, the strongest absorbing component may often be at one edge of the absorbing interval because most of the absorption occurs in a few components; for example, if there are two main components, the strongest one is of course always at the edge.

The main new concept we have introduced in this paper is the rate of energy dissipation in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems. The high level of turbulence evidenced by the observation of multiple components with large velocity dispersions along random lines of sight shows that shocks must occur often in the absorbing gas. When the size of the absorbing systems is constrained by the requirement of matching the observed gas content and incidence rate of the damped absorbers in the context of the Press-Schechter model, we find that the rate at which the kinetic energy of the random cloud motions needs to be resupplied to balance the energy loss in cloud collisions is very high, and cannot be accounted for from the gravitational energy of merging halos.

Haehnelt et al. (1998) analyzed model predictions for the kinematics of the damped systems using numerical simulations of structure formation. They also found that the kinematic properties of the absorption systems reported by PW were in agreement with their simulation, where the motions were generally not dominated by rotating disks. Their simulation did not include any source of heating in addition to the gravitational collapse of structure (such as energy from supernovae explosions). Nevertheless, their simulated absorption profiles have multiple components with characteristics similar to what is observed. Thus, the question that arises in view of our results is how the turbulent energy of the gas in the damped systems of their simulation can be maintained without being dissipated at a rate much faster than it can be replenished by gravitational mergers.

We do not have a clear answer to this question at this point. A reanalysis of the simulation would be desirable to check if the energy dissipation rate is indeed as fast as predicted. If it is not, this may indicate that the problem is related to the limited resolution of the simulation; if it is, one should then find out why gravitational energy is being provided in the simulation at a much faster rate than indicated by our analytical calculation in this paper. The impact parameters of the absorption systems predicted by Haehnelt et al. (1998) are similar to those in our model (see their Fig. 6 for examples of the size and morphology of their simulated absorbers). Therefore, the rate at which the kinetic energy of the gas clouds is lost in shocks should be approximately the same in their simulation as in our model.

What could the physical mechanism be for maintaining the gas motions in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems? If the major source of energy is indeed the merging of halos due to gravitational collapse of structure, as we have assumed in this paper, then our calculation of the rates of energy dissipation or of the energy released in mergers must be wrong by a large factor. The rate of energy dissipation could be much lower if the size of the absorbing systems were much larger than in the Press-Schechter model of halos. The extent of the absorbing systems could be very large if damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems existed in clusters, and several of them were intersected along a line of sight. However, if these clusters had overdensities corresponding to virialized systems, then they would already be included in the Press-Schechter model as massive halos (and the absorbing systems within them should then correspond to our halo clouds), whereas if their overdensity is low it is hard to see how the covering factor of the damped systems within them could be large. But there could be other reasons why the extent of the absorbers is larger than in our model. For example, it could be that only a small fraction of collapsed halos contain extended atomic gas capable of producing damped systems, with most of the halos having their gas concentrated in the center at column densities $`N_H>10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, possibly in molecular form. The observed rate of incidence of the damped systems would then require larger cross sections for the halos that contain extended gas, and therefore longer orbital times and lower dissipation rates.

At the same time, the rate of gravitational energy released could be increased if the atomic gas that is observed in the damped systems is a small fraction of the baryons contained in collapsed halos, but is undergoing most of the energy dissipation required to form galaxies. Thus, if damped systems are produced only by a small fraction of collapsed halos, these halos could precisely be those undergoing a merger. During a large merger, large amounts of gas should be added to halos, which should dissipate energy at a rate much faster than average and should give rise to damped absorbers with a large cross section. Moreover, in this case the gravitational energy available is not only that of the observed gas in damped systems, but also that of the denser, possibly molecular gas that may be hidden from view due to its very high column density (and consequently small cross section). This possibility is related to the uncertainties mentioned in §3 after equation (9).

The other possibility is that an additional source of energy maintains the turbulent motions of the gas clouds in the damped absorbers. As we have discussed in the text, energy from supernova explosions is a plausible candidate. Determinations of the evolution of the metallicity in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (e.g., Lu et al. 1996) may help determine if the supernova energy associated with the production of metals is sufficient to provide the required energy. It is possible, however, that the heavy elements produced are not expelled to the gas observed in damped absorbers, but remain in very high column density systems with molecular gas. This may be hard to reconcile with the low metallicities of many damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems, especially at high redshift (Lu et al. 1996).

A good understanding of the kinematics of the gas in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems can lead to useful constraints on the power spectrum of density fluctuations, through the requirement that halos with the observed velocity dispersion of the gas are sufficiently abundant. Using our spherical halo model, we have obtained the condition that the linearly extrapolated rms fluctuation on spheres of radius $`HR100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ needs to be greater than $`0.75`$ at $`z=4`$. We believe this lower limit should be robust, despite having been derived in the context of our model only. Our spherical halo model should probably yield the maximum line of sight velocity dispersion of gas clouds that could be compatible with a given model of the population of dark matter halos.

Galaxy formation is intimately connected to the process of the dissipation of the gravitational energy of the gas in halos. Therefore, the resolution of the problem of the source of power for the random motions of the absorbing components in damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems should yield one of the clues we need to understand how galaxies form. The degree of rotational support of systems at different column densities is of course another important probe to the formation of disks. So far, it is clear that the kinematics of the absorbers are not consistent with pure rotation in a thin disk; but, given our results and those of Prochaska & Wolfe, it seems difficult to distinguish a thick disk from a purely spherical halo on the basis of absorbing profiles along random lines of sight only. More detailed modeling should be useful here. But new types of observations, such as measuring the relationship of the kinematics to the impact parameter and velocity of associated galaxies, or the difference between absorption profiles of high and low ionization systems, will probably be required to measure the degree of rotation.