The MUSE Extremely Deep Field: the Cosmic Web in Emission at High Redshift
Roland Bacon, David Mary, Thibault Garel, Jeremy Blaizot, Michael Maseda, Joop Schaye, Lutz Wisotzki, Simon Conseil, Jarle Brinchmann, Floriane Leclercq, Valent… 展开作者
Roland Bacon, David Mary, Thibault Garel, Jeremy Blaizot, Michael Maseda, Joop Schaye, Lutz Wisotzki, Simon Conseil, Jarle Brinchmann, Floriane Leclercq, Valentina Abril-Melgarejo, Leindert Boogaard, Nicolas Bouché, Thierry Contini, Anna Feltre, Bruno Guiderdoni, Christian Herenz, Wolfram Kollatschny, Haruka Kusakabe, Jorryt Matthee, Léo Michel-Dansac, Themiya Nanayakkara, Johan Richard, Martin Roth, Kasper B. Schmidt, Matthias Steinmetz, Laurence Tresse, Tanya Urrutia, Anne Verhamme, Peter M. Weilbacher, Johannes Zabl, Sebastiaan L. Zoutendijk
We report the discovery of diffuse extended Ly-alpha emission from redshift 3.1 to 4.5, tracing cosmic web filaments on scales of 2.5-4 comoving Mpc. These structures have been observed in overdensities of Ly-alpha emitters in the MUSE Extremely Deep Field, a 140 hour deep MUSE observation located in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Among the 22 overdense regions identified, 5 are likely to harbor very extended Ly-alpha emission at high significance with an average surface brightness of $\mathrm{5 \times 10^{-20} erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} arcsec^{-2}}$. Remarkably, 70% of the total Ly-alpha luminosity from these filaments comes from beyond the circumgalactic medium of any identified Ly-alpha emitters. Fluorescent Ly-alpha emission powered by the cosmic UV background can only account for less than 34% of this emission at z$\approx$3 and for not more than 10% at higher redshift. We find that the bulk of this diffuse emission can be reproduced by the unresolved Ly-alpha emission of a large population of ultra low luminosity Ly-alpha emitters ($\mathrm{<10^{40} erg s^{-1}}$), provided that the faint end of the Ly-alpha luminosity function is steep ($α\lessapprox -1.8$), it extends down to luminosities lower than $\mathrm{10^{38} - 10^{37} erg s^{-1}}$ and the clustering of these Ly-alpha emitters is significant (filling factor $< 1/6$). If these Ly-alpha emitters are powered by star formation, then this implies their luminosity function needs to extend down to star formation rates $\mathrm{< 10^{-4} M_\odot yr^{-1}}$. These observations provide the first detection of the cosmic web in Ly-alpha emission in typical filamentary environments and the first observational clue for the existence of a large population of ultra low luminosity Ly-alpha emitters at high redshift.
Cosmic web Ly$α$ emission in a sample of overdense regions
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）；INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera（意大利国家天体物理研究所布雷拉天文台）；Univ. Lyon, Univ Lyon1, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574（里昂大学、里昂第一大学、巴黎高等师范学院、法国国家科学研究中心、里昂天体物理研究中心）；Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik（马克斯·普朗克天体物理学研究所）；IUCAA（印度宇宙学天文学与天体物理学中心）；European Southern Observatory（欧洲南方天文台）；Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) UMR 7326（艾克斯-马赛大学、法国国家科学研究中心、马赛天体物理实验室）；Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学物理与天文学系）；Dipartimento di Fisica “G. Occhialini”, Universitá degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca（米兰比可卡大学G.奥恰利尼物理系）
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