We use a semi-analytic model of Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) to constrain the reionization history. By considering two physically motivated scenarios in which reionization ends either early (ERM, z_i ~ 7) or late (LRM, z_i ~ 6), we fix the global value of the IGM neutral fraction (e.g. chi_{HI}=3 times 10^{-4}, 0.15 at z=6.56 for the ERM and LRM, respectively) leaving only the star formation efficiency and the effective escape fraction of Lya photons as free parameters. The ERM fits the observed LAE luminosity function (LF) at z=5.7 and 6.56 requiring no redshift evolution or mass dependence of the star formation efficiency, and LAE star formation rates (SFR) of 3-103 solar masses/year, contributing approximately 8% of the cosmic SFR density at z=5.7. The LRM requires a physically uncomfortable drop of approximately 4.5 times in the SFR of the emitters from z=6.5 to 5.7. Thus, the data seem to imply that the Universe was already highly ionized at z=6.56. The mass-dependent Lya transmissivity is between 0.36-0.51 (ERM) and less than 0.26 (LRM) at z=6.56. The LF data at z=4.5 imply an extra Lya line damping factor of approximately 0.25 possibly due to dust; the presence of a (clumpy) dust component with E(B-V) ~ 0.28 is also required to reproduce the observed large Lya equivalent widths at the same redshift. Additional useful information can be extracted from the line profile (weighted) skewness, found to be S_W=10-17 Angstrom for the two reionization models, which shows an interesting L_alpha-chi_{HI} anti-correlation, holding under the model assumptions. The shortcomings of the model and strategies to overcome them are discussed.
Lyman-alpha absorption is a prominent cosmological tool for probing both galactic halos and the intergalactic medium at high redshift. We consider a variety of sources that can be used as the Lyman-alpha emitters for this purpose. Among these sources, we argue that quasars are the best probes of the evolution of massive halos, while gamma-ray bursts represent the cleanest sources for studying the reionization of the intergalactic medium.
We use a numerical simulation of cosmological reionization to estimate the likelihood of detecting Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies during the pre-reionization era. We show that it is possible to find galaxies even at z~9 that are barely affected by the dumping wing of the Gunn-Peterson absorption from the neutral IGM outside of their HII regions. The damping wing becomes rapidly more significant at z>9, but even at z>10 is it not inconceivable (although quite hard) to see a Lyman-alpha emission line from a star-forming galaxy.
The discovery of Lyman-alpha emission from galaxies at redshifts beyond z~6.5 should not be naively interpreted as implying that the intergalactic medium (IGM) had been reionized at higher redsifts. We show that a cluster of faint undetected sources around each observed galaxy generates an HII region sufficiently large to allow transmission of the galaxy's Lyman-alpha line prior to reionization. We also show that quasars may contribute a significant fraction of the ionizing photons to HII regions around galaxies with a velocity dispersion larger than ~100km/s. These contributing quasars are no…
We show that observations of high-redshift Ly-alpha emitters (LAEs) have the potential to provide definitive evidence for reionization in the near future. Using 200 Mpc radiative transfer simulations, we calculate the effect that patchy reionization has on the line profile, on the luminosity function, and, most interestingly, on the clustering of emitters for several realistic models of reionization. Reionization increases the measured clustering of emitters, and we show that this enhancement would be essentially impossible to attribute to anything other than reionization. Our results motivate…
Lyman-alpha emission from galaxies should be suppressed completely or partially at redshifts beyond reionization. Without knowing the instrinsic properties of galaxies at z = 6.5, this attenuation is hard to infer in any one source, but can be infered from a comparison of luminosity functions of lyman-alpha emitters at redshifts just before and after reionization. We combine published surveys of widely varying depths and areas to construct luminosity functions at z=6.5 and 5.7, where the characteristic luminosity L_star and density phi_star are well constrained while the faint-end slope of the…
We present the star formation histories, luminosities, colors, mass to light ratios, and halo masses of "galaxies" formed in a simulation of cosmological reionization. We compare these galaxies with Lyman Break Galaxies observed at high redshift. While the simulation is severely limited by the small box size, the simulated galaxies do appear as fainter cousins of the observed ones. They have similar colors, and both simulated and observed galaxies can be fitted with the same luminosity function. This is significant to the process of reionization since in the simulation the stars alone are resp…
The spectra of the first galaxies and quasars in the Universe should be strongly absorbed shortward of their rest-frame Lyman-alpha wavelength by neutral hydrogen (HI) in the intervening intergalactic medium. However, the Lyman-alpha line photons emitted by these sources are not eliminated but rather scatter until they redshift out of resonance and escape due to the Hubble expansion of the surrounding intergalactic HI. We calculate the resulting brightness distribution and the spectral shape of the diffuse Lyman-alpha line emission around high redshift sources, before the intergalactic medium …
The first, self-consistent calculations are presented of the cosmological, H2-dissociating UV background produced during the epoch of reionization by the sources of reionization. Large-scale radiative transfer simulations of reionization trace the impact of all the ionizing starlight on the IGM from all the sources in our simulation volume down to dwarf galaxies of mass ~10^8 Msun, identified by very high-resolution N-body simulations, including the self-regulating effect of IGM photoheating on dwarf galaxy formation. The UV continuum emitted below 13.6 eV by each source is then transferred th…
We report an ultra-high-resolution simulation that follows evolution from the earliest stages of galaxy formation through the period of dynamical relaxation. The bubble structures of gas revealed in our simulation ($< 3\times 10^8$ years) resemble closely the high-redshift Lyman $α$ emitters (LAEs). After $10^9$ years these bodies are dominated by stellar continuum radiation and look like the Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) known as the high-redshift star-forming galaxies at which point the abundance of elements appears to be solar. After $1.3\times10^{10}$ years, these galaxies resemble present-d…
The Lyman-alpha emitters found at z ~ 4.5 by the Large Area Lyman Alpha (LALA) survey have high equivalent widths in the Lyman-alpha line, which can be produced by either narrow-lined active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or by stellar populations with a very high proportion of young, massive stars. To investigate the AGN scenario, we obtained two deep Chandra exposures to study the X-ray nature of the Lyman-alpha emitters. The 172 ks deep Chandra image on the LALA Bootes field was presented in a previous paper (Malhotra et al. 2003), and in this paper we present a new Chandra deep exposure (174 ks) o…
Searches for Lyman-alpha emission lines are among the most effective ways to identify high-redshift galaxies. They are particularly interesting because they probe not only the galaxies themselves but also the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The observed line strengths depend on the amount by which each photon is able to redshift away from line center before encountering neutral gas and hence on the size distribution of HII regions surrounding the sources. Here, we use an analytic model of that size distribution to study the effects of reionization on the luminosity function…
The redshift at which the universe was reionized is currently unknown. We examine the optimal strategy for extracting this redshift, z_{reion}, from the spectra of early sources. For a source located at a redshift z_s beyond but close to reionization, 1<[(1+z_s)/(1+z_{reion})]<(32/27), the Gunn-Peterson trough splits into disjoint Lyman-alpha, beta, and possibly higher Lyman series troughs, with some transmitted flux in between these troughs. We show that although the transmitted flux is suppressed considerably by the dense Lyman-alpha forest after reionization, it is still detectable for suff…
Lyman-alpha emission from high-redshift galaxies may be a powerful probe of the ionization history of the IGM at z>6: the observed Lyman-alpha emission line is sensitive to the neutral fraction of IGM hydrogen in the range 0.1-1. We present calculations of observed Lyman-alpha emission lines from z>6 galaxies, illustrating the effect of varying the many free parameters associated with the emitting galaxy, its halo, and the IGM around the galaxy. In particular, we use a dynamic model of the IGM that includes the effect of IGM infall toward the emitting galaxy. Galactic winds may play a crucial …
We have identified an obvious and strong large scale structure at redshift z=5.75 in a wide (31 by 33 arcminute) field, narrowband survey of the Chandra Deep Field South region. This structure is traced by 17 candidate Lyman alpha emitters, among which 12 are found in an 823nm filter (corresponding to Lyman alpha at z=5.77 +- 0.03) and 5 in an 815nm image (z=5.70 +- 0.03). The Lyman alpha emitters in both redshift bins are concentrated in one quadrant of the field. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, Chandra Deep Field South, and GOODS-South fields all lie near the edge of this overdense region. Our …
The central overlap phase of cosmological hydrogen reionization is fundamentally a change in the topology of ionized regions. Before overlap, ionized bubbles grew in isolation. During overlap, they merge into a percolating ionized medium, which fills an ever-increasing volume and eventually replaces neutral gas throughout the intergalactic medium. Overlap can therefore be well studied using topological statistics, and in particular the genus number of the neutral-ionized interface. The most promising observational tools for applying such tests are (a) Lyman alpha galaxies, and (b) 21 cm tomogr…
Lyman alpha galaxies at high redshifts offer a powerful probe of both the formation of galaxies and the reionization of the intergalactic medium. Lyman alpha line emission is an efficient tool for identifying young galaxies at high redshift, because it is strong in systems with young stars and little or no dust-- properties expected in galaxies undergoing their first burst of star-formation. Lyman alpha galaxies also provide a robust test of the reionization epoch that is independent of Gunn-Peterson trough observations in quasar spectra and is better able to distinguish line center optical de…
The Doppler parameter distribution of Lyman-alpha absorption is calculated for a set of different reionization histories. The differences in temperature between different reionization histories are as large as a factor three to four depending on the spectrum of the ionizing sources and the redshift of helium reionization. These temperature differences result in observable differences in the Doppler parameter distribution. Best agreement with the observed Doppler parameter distribution between redshift two and four is found if hydrogen and helium are reionized simultaneously at or before redshi…
We present models for dusty high-redshift Lyman alpha emitting galaxies by combining the Press-Schechter formalism with a treatment of inhomogeneous dust distribution inside galaxies. These models reproduce the surface density of emitters inferred from recent observations, and also agree with previous non-detections. Although a detailed determination of the individual model parameters is precluded by uncertainties, we find that (i) the dust content of primordial galaxies builds up in no more than 5x10^8 years, (ii) the galactic HII regions are inhomogeneous with a cloud covering factor of orde…
The reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is a crucial landmark in the history of the universe, but the processes through which it occurs remain mysterious. In particular, recent numerical and analytic work suggest that reionization by stellar sources is driven by large-scale density fluctuations and must be inhomogeneous on scales of many comoving Mpc. We examine the prospects for constraining the topology of neutral and ionized gas through Lyman-alpha absorption of high-redshift sources. One method is to search for gaps in the Gunn-Peterson absorption troughs of luminous…
We investigate the interaction of Lyman alpha photons produced by the first stars in the universe with the intergalactic medium (IGM) prior to reionization. The background Lyman alpha spectral profile is obtained by solving a Fokker-Planck equation. Accurate values of the heating and scattering rates, and the spin-kinetic temperature coupling coefficient, are presented. We show that the heating rate induced by the Lyman alpha scatterings is much lower than found previously, and is basically negligible. The dominant heating source is most likely the X-rays from the first ionizing sources, which…
For a source of Ly alpha radiation embedded in a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) prior to the reionization epoch, the emission line is strongly suppressed by the intervening IGM. The damping wing of the so-called Gunn-Peterson trough can extend to the red side of the emission line, and erase a significant fraction of the total line flux. However, the transmitted fraction increases with the size of the local cosmological HII region surrounding the source, and therefore with the ionizing luminosity and age of the source. Motivated by the recent discovery of a Ly alpha emitting galaxy at a red…
One well-known way to constrain the hydrogen neutral fraction, x_H, of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM) is through the shape of the red damping wing of the Lya absorption line. We examine this method's effectiveness in light of recent models showing that the IGM neutral fraction is highly inhomogeneous on large scales during reionization. Using both analytic models and "semi-numeric" simulations, we show that the "picket-fence" absorption typical in reionization models introduces both scatter and a systematic bias to the measurement of x_H. In particular, we show that simple fits t…
We made a narrowband NB973 (bandwidth of 200A at 9755A) imaging of the Subaru Deep Field (SDF) and found two z=7 Lyman alpha emitter (LAE) candidates down to NB973=24.9. Carrying out deep follow-up spectroscopy, we identified one of them as a real z=6.96 LAE. This has shown that galaxy formation was in progress just 750 Myr after the Big Bang. Meanwhile, the Lyman alpha line luminosity function of LAE is known to decline from z=5.7 to 6.6 in the SDF. L* at z=6.6 is 40-60% of that at z=5.7. We also confirm that the number density of z=7 LAE is only 17% of the density at z=6.6 comparing the late…
Narrow-band searches for Lyman alpha emission are an efficient way of identifying star-forming galaxies at high redshifts. We present Keck telescope spectra confirming redshifts z = 5.7 for three objects discovered in the Large Area Lyman Alpha (LALA) survey at Kitt Peak National Observatory. All three spectra show strong, narrow emission lines with the asymmetric profile that is characteristically produced in high redshift Lyman alpha emitters by preferential HI absorption in the blue wing of the line. These objects are undetected in deep Bw, V, R, and 6600A narrow-band images from the NOAO D…
We report the discovery of a Lyman-alpha-emitting galaxy at redshift z=6.545 serendipitously identified in the course of spectroscopic follow-up of hard X-ray sources on behalf of the Serendipitous Extragalactic X-Ray Source Identification (SEXSI) survey. The line flux of the galaxy, 2.1e-17 erg/cm2/s, is similar to line fluxes probed by narrow-band imaging surveys; the 5.2 square-arcminutes surveyed implies a surface density of z~6.5 Lyman-alpha emitters somewhat higher than that inferred from narrow-band surveys. This source marks the sixth Lyman-alpha-emitting galaxy identified at z~6.5, a …
The Lyman-alpha emitters found at z=4.5 and 5.7 by the Large Area Lyman Alpha (LALA) survey have high equivalent widths in the Lyman-alpha line. Such lines can be produced by narrow-lined active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or by stellar populations with a very high proportion of young, massive stars. To check for Type-II (i.e., narrow-lined) quasars, we obtained a deep X-ray image of 49 Lyman-alpha sources in a single field of the ACIS instrument on the Chandra X-ray Observatory. None of these sources were detected with a 3-sigma limiting X-ray luminosity of 2.9x10^{43} ergs/s. For comparison, the …
We discuss new observational constraints on the abundance of faint high redshift Lyman-alpha emitters secured from a deep Keck near-infrared spectroscopic survey which utilizes the strong magnification provided by lensing galaxy clusters at intermediate redshift (z=0.2-0.5). In each of 9 clusters we have undertaken a systematic `blind' search for line emission with NIRSPEC in the J-band within carefully-selected regions which offer very high magnifications (>10-50x) for background sources with redshifts z~10. The high magnification enables the detection of emission at unprecedented limits (10^…
We have conducted a long slit search for low surface brightness Lyman-alpha emitters at redshift 2.67 < z < 3.75. A 92 hour long exposure with VLT/FORS2 down to a 1-sigma surface brightness detection limit of 8x10^-20 erg/cm2/s/sqarcsec yielded a sample of 27 single line emitters with fluxes of a few times 10^-18 erg/s/cm2. We present arguments that most objects are indeed Lyman-alpha. The large comoving number density, the large covering factor, dN/dz ~ 0.2-1, and the often extended Lyman-alpha emission suggest that the emitters be identified with the elusive host population of damped Lyman-a…
We use a set of semi-numerical simulations based on Zel'dovich approximation, friends-of-friends algorithm and excursion set formalism to generate reionization maps of high dynamic range with a range of assumptions regarding the distribution and luminosity of ionizing sources and the spatial distribution of sinks for the ionizing radiation. We find that ignoring the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of regions of high gas density where recombinations are important -- as is often done in studies of this kind -- can lead to misleading conclusions regarding the topology of reionization, especial…
We present results from optical narrow-band lambda_c = 8150A ~ and Delta lambda = 120A) observations of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields, using Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope. Using these narrow-band data, we then perform a survey of Lyman alpha Emitters (LAEs) at z~5.7. The LAE survey covers an area of approx 320 arcmin^2 and a co-moving volume of ~8.0 x 10^4 Mpc^3. We found a total of 10 (GOODS-N) and 4 (GOODS-S) LAE candidates at z~5.7. We perform a study of the spatial distribution, space density, and star formation properties of the LAEs at z~5.7.
Models are presented for the Lyman alpha emission of dusty high-redshift galaxies by combining the Press-Schechter formalism with a treatment of the inhomogeneous dust distribution inside galaxies. It is found that the amount of Lyman alpha radiation escaping from the galaxies strongly depends on the time over which the dust is produced through stellar activity, and on the ambient inhomogeneity of the HII regions that surround the ionizing OB stars. Good agreement is found with recent observations, as well as previous non-detections. Our models indicate that the dust content builds up in no mo…
Near-infrared observations of Lyman-break galaxies at redshifts z~3 are beginning to provide constraints on ages, star-formation histories, dust content, metallicities, and stellar masses. At present, uncertainties of more than an order of magnitude are typical for many of these parameters. It is nonetheless interesting to ask what the stellar-population models imply for the existence and luminosities of Lyman-break galaxies at higher redshift. To this end we examine the inferred star-formation rates in two well-studied samples of galaxies as a function of redshift out to z = 10 for various be…
At redshifts beyond z>6, as the mean fraction of neutral hydrogen x_HI in the intergalactic medium (IGM) increases, the line flux of Lyman alpha (Lya) emitters can be significantly suppressed, which can result in a decrease in the observed number of emitters at a given Lya flux. However, cosmological HII regions surrounding the Lya emitting galaxies alleviate these effects. We use simple models of the Lya line suppression that incorporate the presence of HII regions to predict the overall effect of the Lya absorption on the Lya luminosity function. We find, in agreement with other recent studi…
Ionizing sources embedded in the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) before cosmological reionization generate discrete HII regions. We show that a sufficiently bright quasar (for example, one tenth as luminous as that recently discovered by Fan et al.) can ionize a large volume, allowing the transmission of a substantial fraction of the flux of its intrinsic Lyman alpha emission line on both sides of the Lyman alpha wavelength. The observed line profile is richly informative. We show that a sufficiently accurate, high spectral resolution ($R\approx 10^4$) measurement of the line profile of a b…
We report the discovery of a Lyman alpha emitting galaxy at z = 6.518. The single line was found in the 43 square arcmin VLT/FORS field by slitless spectroscopy limited to the atmospheric window at 9100 A (sampling Lya at 6.4 < z < 6.6). Its counterpart is undetected in a deep I band image and the line has an asymmetric appearance in a deeper follow-up spectrum. There are no plausible line identifications except for Lya with a flux of 1.9x10^-17 erg/s/cm2 and rest frame equivalent width > 80 A. The lower limit to the star formation rate density at z = 6.5 derived from our complete sample is 5x…
We present the clustering properties of 151 Lyman alpha emitting galaxies at z ~ 4.5 selected from the Large Area Lyman Alpha (LALA) survey. Our catalog covers an area of 36' x 36' observed with five narrowband filters. We assume that the angular correlation function w(theta) is well represented by a power law A_w = Theta^(-beta) with slope beta = 0.8, and we find A_w = 6.73 +/- 1.80. We then calculate the correlation length r_0 of the real-space two-point correlation function xi(r) = (r/r_0)^(-1.8) from A_w through the Limber transformation, assuming a flat, Lambda-dominated universe. Neglect…
Concurrent observations of Lyman continuum (LyC) and Lyman-alpha (Lya) emission escaping from star-forming systems at low redshift are essential to understanding the physics of reionization at high redshift (z >~ 6). Some have suggested reionization is dominated by numerous small galaxies with LyC escape fractions f_e ~ 10%, while others suggest mini-quasars with higher f_e might also play a role. At z > 3, direct observation of LyC leakage becomes progressively more improbable due to the increase of intervening Ly limit systems, leaving Lya as the primary diagnostic available to the James Web…
The Aim of our study is to understand the variety of observed Lyman-alpha (Lya) line profiles and strengths in Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) and Lya emitters (LAEs), the physical parameters governing them, and hence deriving constraints on the gas and dust content and stellar populations of these objects. Using our 3D Lya radiation transfer code including gas and dust (Verhamme et al. 2006), we fit 11 LBGs from the FORS Deep Field with redshifts between 2.8 and 5 observed by Tapken et al. (2007). A simple geometry of a spherically expanding shell of HI is adopted. RESULTS : The variety of observ…
Context: Ly-alpha-emitters have proven to be excellent probes of faint, star-forming galaxies in the high redshift universe. However, although the sample of known emitters is increasingly growing, their nature (e.g. stellar masses, ages, metallicities, star-formation rates) is still poorly constrained. Aims: We aim to study the nature of Ly-alpha-emitters, to find the properties of a typical Ly-alpha-emitting galaxy and to compare these properties with the properties of other galaxies at similar redshift, in particular Lyman-break galaxies. Methods: We have performed narrow-band imaging at the…
We explore empirical relations between three different populations of high-redshift galaxies and their hosting dark halos employing the halo model approach. Specifically we consider Lyman-break galaxies at z\sim4 and at z\sim5, and Lyman-Alpha emitters at z\simeq 4.86. We adopt a halo occupation function prescription to parameterize the properties of their hosting halos and the efficiency of halo-dependent star formation. We find that the two LBG samples are well described by the halo model with an appropriate HOF. We obtain constraints on properties of their hosting halos. A typical mass of h…
We present the first results of a search for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) in the DEEP2 spectroscopic database that uses a search technique that is different from but complementary to traditional narrowband imaging surveys. We have visually inspected ~20% of the available DEEP2 spectroscopic data and have found nine high-quality LAEs with clearly asymmetric line profiles and an additional ten objects of lower quality, some of which may also be LAEs. Our survey is most sensitive to LAEs at z=4.4-4.9 and that is indeed where all but one of our high-quality objects are found. We find the number den…
We derive the luminosity function of high-redshift Lyman alpha emitting sources from a deep, blind, spectroscopic survey that utilized strong-lensing magnification by intermediate-redshift clusters of galaxies. We observed carefully selected regions near 9 clusters, consistent with magnification factors generally greater than 10 for the redshift range 4.5<z<6.7. Eleven emission-line candidates were located in the range 2.2<z<5.6 whose identification we justify as Lyman alpha, in most cases via further spectroscopic observations. The selection function we constructed for our survey takes into a…
We have carried out a search for Lyman alpha emission from galaxies at z~=2.4 over a field of 1200 sq. arcmin using the CFH12K camera at the CFHT and a custom medium band filter. The search has uncovered 58 candidates, corresponding to a completeness-corrected source density of ~0.07 sq. arcmin^-2. Our sources have red colors (B-I~=1.8) which imply either that a large fraction of the light is highly reddened and we are detecting Lyman alpha through special lines of sight, or that these objects contain an underlying older stellar population. While for each individual object we cannot discrimina…
The temperature of the diffuse, photo-heated intergalactic medium (IGM) depends on its reionization history because the thermal time scales are long. The widths of the hydrogen Lyman-alpha absorption lines seen in the spectra of distant quasars that arise in the IGM can be used to determine its temperature. We use a wavelet analysis of the Lyman-alpha forest region of quasar spectra to demonstrate that there is a relatively sudden increase in the line widths between redshifts z=3.5 and 3.0, which we associate with entropy injection resulting from the reionization of HeII. The subsequent fall-o…
We report an extensive search for Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at z=6.5 in the Subaru Deep Field. Subsequent spectroscopy with Subaru and Keck identified eight more LAEs, giving a total of 17 spectroscopically confirmed LAEs at z=6.5. Based on this spectroscopic sample of 17, complemented by a photometric sample of 58 LAEs, we have derived a more accurate Lyman-alpha luminosity function of LAEs at z=6.5, which reveals an apparent deficit at the bright end of ~0.75 mag fainter L*, compared with that observed at z=5.7. The difference in the LAE luminosity functions between z=5.7 and 6.5 is signif…
During the epoch of reionization, Ly-alpha photons emitted by the first stars can couple the neutral hydrogen spin temperature to the kinetic gas temperature, providing the opportunity to observe the gas in emission or absorption in the 21-cm line. Given the bright foregrounds, it is of prime importance to determine precisely the fluctuations signature of the signal, to be able to extract it by its correlation power. LICORICE is a Monte-Carlo radiative transfer code, coupled to the dynamics via an adaptative Tree-SPH code. We present here the Ly-alpha part of the implementation, and validate i…
We explore the impact of spatial fluctuations in the intergalactic medium temperature on the Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum near z ~ 3. We develop a semianalytic model to examine temperature fluctuations resulting from inhomogeneous HI and incomplete HeII reionizations. Detection of these fluctuations might provide insight into the reionization histories of hydrogen and helium. Furthermore, these fluctuations, neglected in previous analyses, could bias constraints on cosmological parameters from the Lyman-alpha forest. We find that the temperature fluctuations resulting from inhomogene…
We propose a new model for the extended Ly alpha blobs found recently at high redshift z ~ 3. The observational properties of these blobs are; 1) the observed Ly alpha luminosities are ~ 10^{43} h^{-2} ergs s^{-1}, 2) they appear elongated morphologically, 3) their sizes amount to ~ 100 kpc, 4) the observed line widths amount to ~ 1000 km s^{-1}, and 5) they are not associated with strong radio-continuum sources. All these observational properties seem to be explained in terms of galactic winds driven by successive supernova explosions shortly after the initial burst of massive star formation …
We carried out a target survey for Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) and Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) around QSO SDSS J0211-0009 at z=4.87. The deep and wide broadband and narrowband imaging simultaneously revealed the perspective structure of these two high-z populations. The LBGs without Ly-alpha emission form a filamentary structure including the QSO, while the LAEs are distributed around the QSO but avoid it within a distance of ~4.5Mpc. On the other hand, we serendipitously discovered a protocluster with a significant concentration of LBGs and LAEs where no strongly UV ionizing source such as a …
We present predictions for the abundance of Ly-$α$ emitters in hierarchical structure formation models. We use the {\tt GALFORM} semi-analytical model to explore the impact on the predicted counts of varying assumptions about the escape fraction of Ly-$α$ photons, the redshift at which the universe reionised and the cosmological density parameter. A model with a fixed escape fraction gives a remarkably good match to the observed counts over a wide redshift interval. We present predictions for the expected counts in a typical observation with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument pro…
