J/MNRAS/455/1043 SDSS DLA and absorber quasar samples (Murphy+, 2016) ================================================================================ The dust content of damped Lyman {alpha} systems in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Murphy M.T., Bernet M.L. =2016MNRAS.455.1043M (SIMBAD/NED BibCode) ================================================================================ ADC_Keywords: QSOs ; Redshifts ; Equivalent widths Keywords: dust, extinction - galaxies: high redshift - intergalactic medium - galaxies: ISM - quasars: absorption lines Abstract: The dust content of damped Lyman {alpha} systems (DLAs) is an important observable for understanding their origin and the neutral gas reservoirs of galaxies. While the average colour excess of DLAs, E(B-V), is known to be <~15-millimagnitude (mmag), both detections and non-detections with ~2mmag precision have been reported. Here we find 3.2{sigma} statistical evidence for DLA dust-reddening of 774 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasars by comparing their fitted spectral slopes to those of ~7000 control quasars. The corresponding E(B-V) is 3.0+/-1.0mmag, assuming a Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) dust extinction law, and it correlates strongly (3.5{sigma}) with the metal content, characterized by the SiII {lambda}1526 absorption-line equivalent width, providing additional confidence that the detection is due to dust in the DLAs. Evolution of E(B-V) over the redshift range 2.1