2016ApJ...829..128B

We present the Green Bank Telescope absorption survey of cold atomic hydrogen (<=300 K) in the inner halo of low-redshift galaxies. The survey aims to characterize the cold gas distribution and to address where the condensation-the process where ionized gas accreted by galaxies condenses into cold gas within the disks of galaxies-occurs. Our sample consists of 16 galaxy-quasar pairs with impact parameters of <=20 kpc. We detected an H i absorber associated with J0958+3222 (NGC 3067) and H i emission from six galaxies. We also found two Ca ii absorption systems in the archival SDSS data associated with galaxies J0958+3222 and J1228+3706. Our detection rate of H i absorbers with optical depths of >=0.06 is ∼7%. We also find that the cold H i phase (<=300 K) is 44(±18)% of the total atomic gas in the sightline probing J0958+3222. We find no correlation between the peak optical depth and impact parameter or stellar and H i radii normalized impact parameters, ρ/R₉₀ and ρ/R_H i_. We conclude that the process of condensation of inflowing gas into cold (<=300 K) H i occurs at the ρ ≪ 20 kpc. However, the warmer phase of neutral gas (T ∼ 1000 K) can exist out to much larger distances, as seen in emission maps. Therefore, the process of condensation of warm to cold H i is likely occurring in stages from ionized to warm H i in the inner halo and then to cold H i very close to the galaxy disk.