Measurability of kinetic temperature from metal absorption-line spectra formed in chaotic media

We present a new method for recovering the kinetic temperature of the intervening diffuse gas to an accuracy of 10%. The method is based on the comparison of unsaturated absorption-line profiles of two species with different atomic weights. The species are assumed to have the same temperature and bulk motion within the absorbing region. The computational technique involves the Fourier transform of the absorption profiles and the consequent entropy-regularized chi(2)-minimization (ERM) to estimate the model parameters. The procedure is tested using synthetic spectra of C(+), Si(+), and Fe(+) ions. The comparison with the standard Voigt fitting analysis is performed, and it is shown that the Voigt deconvolution of the complex absorption-line profiles may result in estimated temperatures that are not physical. We also successfully analyze Keck telescope spectra of C II lambda 1334 and Si II lambda 1260 lines observed at the redshift z = 3.572 toward the quasar Q1937-1009 by Tytler et al.