Metal-poor, Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of a z = 2.4 Star-forming Galaxy: Direct Evidence for Cold Accretion?

In our current galaxy formation paradigm, high-redshift galaxies are predominantly fueled by accretion of cool, metal-poor gas from the intergalactic medium. Hydrodynamical simulations predict that this material should be observable in absorption against background sightlines within a galaxy's virial radius, as optically thick Lyman limit systems (LLSs) with low metallicities. Here we report the discovery of exactly such a strong metal-poor absorber at an impact parameter R = 58 kpc from a star-forming galaxy at z = 2.44. Besides strong neutral hydrogen (N_{{H}^0}=10^{19.50+/- 0.16}\, cm^{-2}) we detect neutral deuterium and oxygen, allowing a precise measurement of the metallicity: log₁₀(Z/Z _⊙) = -2.0 ± 0.17, or (7-15) × 10^-3 solar. Furthermore, the narrow deuterium linewidth requires a cool temperature <20,000 K. Given the striking similarities between this system and the predictions of simulations, we argue that it represents the direct detection of a high-redshift cold-accretion stream. The low-metallicity gas cloud is a single component of an absorption system exhibiting a complex velocity, ionization, and enrichment structure. Two other components have metallicities >0.1 solar, 10 times larger than the metal-poor component. We conclude that the photoionized circumgalactic medium (CGM) of this galaxy is highly inhomogeneous: the majority of the gas is in a cool, metal-poor and predominantly neutral phase, but the majority of the metals are in a highly ionized phase exhibiting weak neutral hydrogen absorption but strong metal absorption. If such inhomogeneity is common, then high-resolution spectra and detailed ionization modeling are critical to accurately appraise the distribution of metals in the high-redshift CGM.

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