1. Absorption Troughs of Lyα Emitters in HETDEX
- Author
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Laurel H. Weiss, Dustin Davis, Karl Gebhardt, Simon Gazagnes, Mahan Mirza Khanlari, Erin Mentuch Cooper, John Chisholm, Danielle Berg, William P. Bowman, Chris Byrohl, Robin Ciardullo, Maximilian Fabricius, Daniel Farrow, Caryl Gronwall, Gary J. Hill, Lindsay R. House, Donghui Jeong, Hasti Khoraminezhad, Wolfram Kollatschny, Eiichiro Komatsu, Maja Lujan Niemeyer, Shun Saito, Donald P. Schneider, and Gregory R. Zeimann
- Subjects
High-redshift galaxies ,Lyα galaxies ,Diffuse radiation ,Astrophysics ,QB460-466 - Abstract
The Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is designed to detect and measure the redshifts of more than 1 million Ly α emitting galaxies (LAEs) 1.88 < z < 3.52. In addition to its cosmological measurements, these data enable studies of Ly α spectral profiles and the underlying radiative transfer. Using the roughly half a million LAEs in the HETDEX Data Release 3, we stack various subsets to obtain the typical Ly α profile for the z ∼ 2–3 epoch and to understand their physical properties. We find clear absorption wings around Ly α emission, which extend ∼2000 km s ^−1 both redward and blueward of the central line. Using far-UV spectra of nearby (0.002 < z < 0.182) LAEs in the COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopic Survey treasury and optical/near-IR spectra of 2.8 < z < 6.7 LAEs in the Multi Unit Spectroscopic-Wide survey, we observe absorption profiles in both redshift regimes. Dividing the sample by volume density shows that the troughs increase in higher-density regions. This trend suggests that the depth of the absorption is dependent on the local density of objects near the LAE, a geometry that is similar to damped Ly α systems. Simple simulations of Ly α radiative transfer can produce similar troughs due to absorption of light from background sources by H i gas surrounding the LAEs.
- Published
- 2024
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