1. A cautionary tale of Ly C escape fraction estimates from high-redshift galaxies
- Author
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R Bassett, E V Ryan-Weber, J Cooke, U Meštrić, L J Prichard, M Rafelski, I Iwata, M Sawicki, S Gwyn, S Arnouts, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), and Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Subjects
[SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics] ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,first stars ,reionization ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,intergalactic medium ,dark ages ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,galaxies: ISM - Abstract
Measuring the escape fraction, $f_{\rm esc}$, of ionizing, Lyman Continuum (LyC) radiation is key to our understanding of the process of cosmic reionization. In this paper we provide a methodology for recovering the posterior probability distribution of the LyC escape fraction, $f_{\rm esc}^{\rm PDF}$, considering both the observational uncertainties and ensembles of simulated transmission functions through the intergalactic medium (IGM). We present an example of this method applied to a VUDS galaxy at $z=3.64$ and find $f_{\rm esc}^{\rm PDF}$ = 0.51$^{+0.33}_{-0.34}$ and compare this to the values computed assuming averaged IGM transmission with and without consideration of detection bias along average sightlines yielding $f_{\rm esc}^{\langle T \rangle}$ = 1.40$^{+0.80}_{-0.42}$, and $f_{\rm esc}^{\rm bias}$ = 0.82$^{+0.33}_{-0.16}$. Our results highlight the limitations of methods assuming average, smooth transmission functions. We also present MOSFIRE data for a sample of seven LyC candidates selected based on photometric redshifts at $z > 3.4$, but find that all seven have overestimated photometric redshifts by $\Delta z \sim 0.2$ making them unsuitable for LyC measurements. This results likely due to a bias induced by our selection criteria., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figues, 2 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS
- Published
- 2022