MNRAS-2008-Iliev-63-83.pdf (1.82 MB)
The effect of the intergalactic environment on the observability of Lya emitters during reionization
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 06:07 authored by Ilian IlievIlian Iliev, Paul R Shapiro, Patrick McDonald, Garrelt Mellema, Ue-Li PenObservations of high-redshift Lya sources are a major tool for studying the high-redshift universe and are one of the most promising ways to constrain the later stages of reionization. The understanding and interpretation of the data is far from straightforward, however. We discuss the effect of the reionizing intergalactic medium (IGM) on the observability of Lya sources based on large simulations of early structure formation with radiative transfer. This takes into account self-consistently the reionization history, density, velocity and ionization structures and non-linear source clustering. We find that all fields are highly anisotropic and as a consequence there are very large variations in opacity among the different lines of sight. The velocity effects, from both infall and source peculiar velocity are most important for the luminous sources, affecting the line profile and depressing the bright end of the luminosity function. The line profiles are generally asymmetric and the line centres of the luminous sources are always absorbed due to the high density of the local IGM. For both luminous and average sources the damping wing effects are of similar magnitude and remain significant until fairly late, when the IGM is ionized between 30 and 70 per cent by mass.
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- Published
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- Published version
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical SocietyISSN
0035-8711External DOI
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1Volume
391Page range
63-83Pages
21.0Department affiliated with
- Physics and Astronomy Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2012-02-06First Open Access (FOA) Date
2016-03-22First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-11-03Usage metrics
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