We introduce a new set of large scale, high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium: the Sherwood simulation suite. These are performed in volumes 10^3-160^3 h^-3 comoving Mpc^{3}, span almost four orders of magnitude in mass resolution with up to 17.2 billion particles, and employ a variety of physics variations including warm dark matter and galactic outflows. We undertake a detailed comparison of the simulations to high resolution, high signal-to-noise observations of the Lyman-alpha forest over the redshift range 2 < z < 5. The simulations are in very good agreement with the observational data, lending further support to the paradigm that the Lyman-alpha forest is a natural consequence of the web-like distribution of matter arising in LCDM cosmological models. Only a small number of minor discrepancies remain with respect to the observational data. Saturated Lyman-alpha absorption lines with column densities N_HI > 10^14.5 cm^-2 at 2 < z < 2.5 are underpredicted in the models. An uncertain correction for continuum placement bias is required to match the distribution and power spectrum of the transmitted flux, particularly at z > 4. Finally, the temperature of intergalactic gas in the simulations may be slightly too low at z=2.7 and a flatter temperature-density relation is required at z=2.4, consistent with the expected effects of non-equilibrium ionisation during He-II reionisation.
We present the Sherwood-Relics simulations, a new suite of large cosmological hydrodynamical simulations aimed at modelling the intergalactic medium (IGM) during and after the cosmic reionization of hydrogen. The suite consists of over 200 simulations that cover a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological parameters. It also includes simulations that use a new lightweight hybrid scheme for treating radiative transfer effects. This scheme follows the spatial variations in the ionizing radiation field, as well as the associated fluctuations in IGM temperature and pressure smoothing. It is com…
We study the effect of different feedback prescriptions on the properties of the low redshift ($z\leq1.6$) Ly$α$ forest using a selection of hydrodynamical simulations drawn from the Sherwood simulation suite. The simulations incorporate stellar feedback, AGN feedback and a simplified scheme for efficiently modelling the low column density Ly$α$ forest. We confirm a discrepancy remains between Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) observations of the Ly$α$ forest column density distribution function (CDDF) at $z \simeq 0.1$ for high column density systems ($N_{\rm HI}>10^{14}\rm\,cm^{-2}$), as wel…
Three-dimensional correlations of the Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest and cross correlations between the Ly$α$ forest and quasars have been measured on large scales, allowing a precise measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature at redshifts $z>2$. These 3D correlations are often modelled using linear perturbation theory, but full-shape analyses to extract cosmological information beyond BAO will require more realistic models capable of describing non-linearities present at smaller scales. We present a measurement of the Ly$α$ forest flux power spectrum from large hydrodynamic simula…
Physical Calibration of a Minimal Effective Field Theory of the Three-Dimensional Lyman-$α$ Forest
SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies（国际高等研究院）；INFN – National Institute for Nuclear Physics（意大利国家核物理研究所）；IFPU, Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe（宇宙基础物理研究所）；Centre for Astrophysics Research, Department of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学天体物理学研究中心）；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste（的里雅斯特天文台）
Inhomogeneous reionization enhances the 1D Lyman-$α$ forest power spectrum on large scales at redshifts $z\geq4$. This is due to coherent fluctuations in the ionized hydrogen fraction that arise from large-scale variations in the post-reionization gas temperature, which fade as the gas cools. It is therefore possible to use these relic fluctuations to constrain inhomogeneous reionization with the power spectrum at wavenumbers $\log_{10}(k/{\rm km^{-1}\,s})\lesssim -1.5$. We use the Sherwood-Relics suite of hybrid radiation hydrodynamical simulations to perform a first analysis of new Lyman-$α$…
Observations of the Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest in spectra of distant quasars enable us to probe the matter power spectrum at relatively small scales. With several upcoming surveys, it is expected that there will be a many-fold increase in the quantity and quality of data, and hence it is important to develop efficient simulations to forward model these data sets. One such semi-numerical method is based on the assumption that the baryonic densities in the intergalactic medium (IGM) follow a lognormal distribution. In this work, we test the robustness of the lognormal model of the Ly$α$ forest in …
Modeling the Cosmological Lyman-$α$ Forest at the Field Level
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校物理学院宇宙学物理中心）；Center for Theoretical Physics – a Leinweber Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院莱因韦伯理论物理中心）；High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构（KEK））；Institute for Advanced Study（高等研究院）
In this work we extend our recently developed multi-fidelity emulation technique to the simulated Lyman-$α$ forest flux power spectrum. Multi-fidelity emulation allows interpolation of simulation outputs between cosmological parameters using many cheap low-fidelity simulations and a few expensive high-fidelity simulations. Using a test suite of small box (30 Mpc/h) simulations, we show that multi-fidelity emulation is able to reproduce the Lyman-$α$ forest flux power spectrum well, achieving an average accuracy when compared to a test suite of $0.8\%$. We further show that it has a substantial…
We model the transmission of the Lyman-alpha line through the circum- and intergalactic media around dark matter haloes expected to host Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) at z > 5.7, using the high-dynamic-range Sherwood simulations. We find very different CGM environments around more massive haloes (~10^11 M_sun) compared to less massive haloes (~10^9 M_sun) at these redshifts, which can contribute to a different evolution of the Lyman-alpha transmission from LAEs within these haloes. Additionally we confirm that part of the differential evolution could result from bright LAEs being more likely to …
We model the high redshift (z > 5) Lyman-$α$ emitting (LAE) galaxy population using the empirical rest-frame equivalent width distribution. We calibrate to the observed luminosity function and angular correlation function at z = 5.7 as measured by the SILVERRUSH survey. This allows us to populate the high-dynamic-range Sherwood simulation suite with LAEs, and to calculate the transmission of their Ly $α$ emission through the inter-galactic medium (IGM). We use this simulated population to explore the effect of the IGM on high-redshift observations of LAEs, and make predictions for the narrowba…
An improved model for the effect of correlated Si-III absorption on the one-dimensional Lyman-$α$ forest power spectrum
The University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学）；Indian Institute of Technology Indore（印度印多尔理工学院）；Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam（波茨坦阿斯特拉夫斯研究所）
We use the Sherwood-Relics suite of hybrid hydrodynamical and radiative transfer simulations to model the effect of inhomogeneous reionisation on the 1D power spectrum of the \Lya forest transmitted flux at redshifts $4.2\leq z \leq 5$. Relative to models that assume a homogeneous UV background, reionisation suppresses the power spectrum at small scales, $k \sim 0.1\rm\,km^{-1}\,s$ by $\sim 10$ per cent because of spatial variations in the thermal broadening kernel and the divergent peculiar velocity field associated with over-pressurised intergalactic gas. On larger scales, $k<0.03\rm\,km^{-1…
Forecast for the detectability of patchy hydrogen reionization in WEAVE-QSO measurements of the Lyman-$α$ forest power spectrum at redshift $z \geq 4$
The University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学）；Indian Institute of Technology Indore（印度理工学院印多尔分校）；Aix Marseille Université（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca（米兰比可卡大学）；Camosun College（卡莫森学院）；IUCAA（印度天体物理与宇宙学研究与教学中心）；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera（意大利国家天体物理研究所布拉耶天文台）
Current analyses of the Lyman-alpha forest assume that the primordial power spectrum of density perturbations obeys a simple power law, a strong theoretical assumption which should be tested. Employing a large suite of numerical simulations which drop this assumption, we reconstruct the shape of the primordial power spectrum using Lyman-alpha data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Our method combines a minimally parametric framework with cross-validation, a technique used to avoid over-fitting the data. Future work will involve predictions for the upcoming Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey…
Post-inflationary axion constraints from the Lyman-$α$ forest
University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）；KICC - Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge（卡弗里宇宙学剑桥研究所）；University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学）；SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies（国际高等研究院）；IFPU, Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe（宇宙基础物理研究所）；INFN, Sezione di Trieste（意大利国家核物理研究所的里雅斯特分部）；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste（意大利国家天体物理研究所的里雅斯特天文台）；University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）
The signature left in quasar spectra by the presence of neutral hydrogen in the Universe allows one to constrain the sum of the neutrino masses with improved sensitivity, with respect to laboratory experiments, and may shed a new light on the neutrino mass hierarchy and on the absolute mass scale of neutrinos. Constraints on cosmological parameters and on the dark energy equation of state can also be derived, from a joint parameter estimation procedure. However, this requires a detailed modeling of the line-of-sight power spectrum of the transmitted flux in the Lyman-Alpha (LyA) forest on scal…
Current results from the Lyman alpha forest assume that the primordial power spectrum of density perturbations follows a simple power law form, with running. We present the first analysis of Lyman alpha data to study the effect of relaxing this strong assumption on primordial and astrophysical constraints. We perform a large suite of numerical simulations, using them to calibrate a minimally parametric framework for describing the power spectrum. Combined with cross-validation, a statistical technique which prevents over-fitting of the data, this framework allows us to reconstruct the power sp…
In La Plante et al. (2017), we presented a new suite of hydrodynamic simulations with the aim of accurately capturing the process of helium II reionization. In this paper, we discuss the observational signatures present in the He II Ly$α$ forest. We show that the effective optical depth of the volume $τ_\mathrm{eff}$ is not sufficient for capturing the ionization state of helium II, due to the large variance inherent in sightlines. However, the He II flux PDF can be used to determine the timing of helium II reionization. The amplitude of the one-dimensional flux power spectrum can also determi…
The cosmic web's Lyman-$α$ glow at $z \approx 2.5$; hydrodynamic models, dust, and wide-field, narrow-band detection
Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine（乌克兰国家科学院主天文台）；Astronomical Observatory, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv（基辅塔拉斯舍甫琴科国立大学天文台）；University of Aberdeen（阿伯丁大学）；Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学）；Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天体物理研究所）；Big Questions Institute（重大问题研究所）；Stony Brook University（石溪大学）；American Museum of Natural History（美国自然历史博物馆）；Amazon Web Services（亚马逊云服务）；The University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）
The statistical power of Lyman-$α$ forest Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements is set to increase significantly in the coming years as new instruments such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument deliver progressively more constraining data. Generating mock datasets for such measurements will be important for validating analysis pipelines and evaluating the effects of systematics. With such studies in mind, we present LyaCoLoRe: a package for producing synthetic Lyman-$α$ forest survey datasets for BAO analyses. LyaCoLoRe transforms initial Gaussian random field skewers into skew…
The baryon-acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature in the Lyman-$α$ forest is one of the key probes of the cosmic expansion rate at redshifts z~2.5, well before dark energy is believed to have become dynamically significant. A key advantage of the BAO as a standard ruler is that it is a sharp feature and hence is more robust against broadband systematic effects than other cosmological probes. However, if the Lyman-$α$ forest transmission is sensitive to the initial streaming velocity of the baryons relative to the dark matter, then the BAO peak position can be shifted. Here we investigate this sens…
The quest for the neutrino mass is a central goal in contemporary cosmology, subject to intense scrutiny, and among different large-scale structure tracers the Lyman-Alpha forest is re-emerging as a unique tool to probe the neutrino mass at high-redshift - through characteristic imprints on the transmitted Lyman-Alpha flux. A detailed modeling of the low-density regions of the intergalactic medium in presence of massive neutrinos on scale ranging from a few to hundreds of megaparsecs is required, if one wants to interpret state-of-the-art data from observations of quasar spectra. To this end, …
Improving the understanding of the processes governing small-scale nonlinear clustering is a necessary task for interpreting upcoming high-quality cosmological data, as it will allow one to break degeneracies and obtain tight neutrino mass and warm dark matter constraints from large-scale structure probes. The Sejong Suite, an extensive collection of state-of-the-art high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, has been intended with this primary goal in mind. Spanning a large number of cosmological and astrophysical parameters (especially suitable for the dark sector), and organiz…
The filamentary network of intergalactic medium (IGM) gas that gives origin to the Lyman-alpha forest in the spectra of distant quasars encodes information on the physics of structure formation and the early thermodynamics of diffuse baryonic material. Here, we use a massive suite of more than 400 high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations run with the Graphics Processing Unit-accelerated code Cholla to study the IGM at high spatial resolution maintained over the entire computational volume. The simulations capture a wide range of possible thermal histories of intergalactic gas by…
We study the statistics of the Lyman-$α$ forest in a flat LCDM cosmology with the N-body + Eulerian hydrodynamics code Nyx. We produce a suite of simulations, covering the observationally relevant redshift range $2 \leq z \leq 4$. We find that a grid resolution of 20 kpc/h is required to produce one percent convergence of Lyman-$α$ flux statistics, up to k = 10 h/Mpc. In addition to establishing resolution requirements, we study the effects of missing modes in these simulations, and find that box sizes of L > 40 Mpc/h are needed to suppress numerical errors to a sub-percent level. Our opticall…
We present LyMAS2, an improved version of the "Lyman-α Mass Association Scheme" aiming at predicting the large-scale 3d clustering statistics of the Lyman-α forest (Ly-α) from moderate resolution simulations of the dark matter (DM) distribution, with prior calibrations from high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of smaller volumes. In this study, calibrations are derived from the Horizon-AGN suite simulations, (100 Mpc/h)^3 comoving volume, using Wiener filtering, combining information from dark matter density and velocity fields (i.e. velocity dispersion, vorticity, line of sight 1d-diver…
Lyman-Alpha Forest and its Cross-Correlation with High-Redshift Galaxies in Effective Field Theory at the Field Level
Center for Theoretical Physics – a Leinweber Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院理论物理中心）；The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions（美国国家科学基金会人工智能基础相互作用研究所）；Department of Physics, Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学物理系）；NASA Hubble Fellowship Program（NASA 哈勃奖学金计划）；Theory Center, Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)（高能加速器研究机构粒子与核研究学院理论中心）
With upcoming high-quality data from surveys such as the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) or the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), improving the theoretical modeling and gaining a deeper understanding of the effects of neutrinos and dark radiation on structure formation at small scales are necessary, to obtain robust constraints free from systematic biases. Using a novel suite of hydrodynamical simulations that incorporate dark matter, baryons, massive neutrinos, and dark radiation, we present a detailed study of their impact on Lyman-Alpha forest observables…
Using a suite of hydrodynamical simulations with cold dark matter, baryons, and neutrinos, we present a detailed study of the effect of massive neutrinos on the 1-D and 3-D flux power spectra of the Lyman-$α$ (Ly$α$) forest. The presence of massive neutrinos in cosmology induces a scale- and time-dependent suppression of structure formation that is strongest on small scales. Measuring this suppression is a key method for inferring neutrino masses from cosmological data, and is one of the main goals of ongoing and future surveys like eBOSS, DES, LSST, Euclid or DESI. The clustering in the Ly$α$…
We investigate the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the redshift interval z=1.7--3.2 by studying the small-scale fluctuations in the Lyman alpha forest transmitted flux. We apply a wavelet filtering technique to eighteen high resolution quasar spectra obtained with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES), and compare these data to synthetic spectra drawn from a suite of hydrodynamical simulations in which the IGM thermal state and cosmological parameters are varied. From the wavelet analysis we obtain estimates of the IGM thermal state that are in good agreem…
The density and temperature properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) reflect the heating and ionization history during cosmological structure formation, and are primarily probed by the Lyman-alpha forest of neutral hydrogen absorption features in the observed spectra of background sources (Gunn & Peterson 1965). We present the methodology and initial results from the Cholla IGM Photoheating Simulation (CHIPS) suite performed with the Graphics Process Unit-accelerated Cholla code to study the IGM at high, uniform spatial resolution maintained over large volumes. In this first paper, we exam…
The Lyman-$α$ forest is a powerful probe for cosmology, but it is also strongly impacted by galaxy evolution and baryonic processes such as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) feedback, which can redistribute mass and energy on large scales. We constrain the signatures of AGN feedback on the 1D power spectrum of the Lyman-$α$ forest using a series of eight hydro-cosmological simulations performed with the Adaptative Mesh Refinement code RAMSES. This series starts from the Horizon-AGN simulation and varies the sub-grid parameters for AGN feeding, feedback and stochasticity. These simulations cover the…
We examine the abundance, clustering and metallicity of Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers (DLAs) in a suite of hydrodynamic cosmological simulations using the moving mesh code AREPO. We incorporate models of supernova and AGN feedback, as well as molecular hydrogen formation. We compare our simulations to the column density distribution function at $z=3$, the total DLA abundance at $z=2-4$, the measured DLA bias at $z=2.3$ and the DLA metallicity distribution at $z=2-4$. Our preferred models produce populations of DLAs in good agreement with most of these observations. The exception is the DLA abun…
We present a physically motivated model to estimate the molecular hydrogen (H2) content of high-redshift (z~5.7,6.6) Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) extracted from a suite of cosmological simulations. We find that the H2 mass fraction, (f_H2), depends on three main LAE physical properties: (a) star formation rate, (b) dust mass, and (c) cold neutral gas mass. At z~5.7, the value of f_H2 peaks and ranges between 0.5-0.9 for intermediate mass LAEs with stellar mass M_* ~ 10^{9-10} solar mass, decreasing for both smaller and larger galaxies. However, the largest value of the H2 mass is found in the m…
We present the Sejong Suite, an extensive collection of state-of-the-art high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations spanning a variety of cosmological and astrophysical parameters, primarily developed for modeling the Lyman-Alpha (LyA) forest. The suite is organized into three main categories (Grid Suite, Supporting Suite, and Systematics Suite), addressing different science targets. Adopting a particle-based implementation, we follow the evolution of gas, dark matter (cold and warm), massive neutrinos, and dark radiation, and consider several combinations of box sizes and number …
We present a suite of cosmological N-body simulations with cold dark matter and baryons aiming at modeling the low-density regions of the IGM as probed by the Lyman-$α$ forests at high redshift. The simulations are designed to match the requirements imposed by the quality of BOSS and eBOSS data. They are made using either 2x768$^3$ or 2x192$^3$ particles, spanning volumes ranging from (25 Mpc.h$^{-1})^3$ for high-resolution simulations to (100 Mpc.h$^{-1})^3$ for large-volume ones. Using a splicing technique, the resolution is further enhanced to reach the equivalent of simulations with 2x3072…
We present updated constraints on the free-streaming of warm dark matter (WDM) particles derived from an analysis of the Lya flux power spectrum measured from high-resolution spectra of 25 z > 4 quasars obtained with the Keck High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) and the Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle (MIKE) spectrograph. We utilize a new suite of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations that explore WDM masses of 1, 2 and 4 keV (assuming the WDM consists of thermal relics), along with different physically motivated thermal histories. We carefully address different sources of system…
We present an analysis aimed at combining cosmological constraints from number counts of galaxy clusters identified through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, obtained with the South Pole Telescope (SPT), and from Lyman-$α$ spectra obtained with the MIKE/HIRES and X-shooter spectrographs. The SPT cluster analysis relies on mass calibration based on weak lensing measurements, while the Lyman-$α$ analysis is built over a suite of hydrodynamical simulations for the extraction of mock spectra. The resulting constraints exhibit a tension ($\sim 3.3σ$) between the low $σ_8$ values preferred by the low-re…
