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Description
We present results from a spectroscopically blind search for associated and intervening HI 21cm and OH 18cm absorption lines toward 88 active galactic nuclei (AGN) at 2<z<5 using the uGMRT. The sample of AGN with 1.4GHz spectral luminosity in the range 10^27-29.3^W/Hz is selected using mid-infrared colors and closely resembles the distribution of the underlying quasar population. The search for associated or proximate absorption, defined to be within 3000km/s of the AGN redshift, led to one HI 21cm absorption detection (M1540-1453; z_abs_=2.1139). This is only the fourth known absorption at z>2. The detection rate (1.6_-1.4_^+3.8^%) suggests a low covering factor of the cold neutral medium (CNM; T~100K) associated with these powerful AGN. The intervening absorption line search, with a sensitivity to detect the CNM in damped Ly{alpha} systems (DLAs), has comoving absorption path lengths of {Delta}X=130.1 and 167.7 for HI and OH, respectively. The corresponding number of absorbers per unit comoving path length are <=0.014 and <=0.011, respectively. The former is at least 4.5 times lower than that of DLAs and consistent with the CNM cross section estimated using H_2_ and CI absorbers at z>2. Our AGN sample is optically fainter compared to the quasars used to search for DLAs in the past. In our optical spectra obtained using SALT and NOT, we detect five intervening (redshift path ~9.3) and two proximate DLAs. This is slightly excessive compared to the statistics based on optically selected quasars. The nondetection of HI 21cm absorption from these DLAs suggests a small CNM covering fraction around galaxies at z>2.
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