21-cm absorption studies with the Square Kilometer Array

Nissim Kanekar*, F. H. Briggs

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalShort surveypeer-review

    46 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    HI 21-cm absorption spectroscopy provides an excellent probe of the neutral gas content of absorbing galaxies, yielding information on their kinematics, mass, physical size and ISM conditions. The high sensitivity, unrivaled frequency coverage and RFI suppression techniques of the SKA will enable it to use HI absorption to study the ISM of high column density intervening systems along thousands of lines of sight out to high redshifts. Blind SKA 21-cm surveys will yield large, unbiased absorber samples, tracing the evolution of normal galaxies and active galactic nuclei from z ≳ 6 to the present epoch. It will thus be possible to directly measure the physical size and mass of typical galaxies as a function of redshift and, hence, to test hierarchical models of structure formation.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1259-1270
    Number of pages12
    JournalNew Astronomy Reviews
    Volume48
    Issue number11-12
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2004

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