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- Verhamme, A., et al.
(författare)
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Recovering the systemic redshift of galaxies from their Lyman alpha line profile
- 2018
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966 .- 1745-3925 .- 1745-3933. ; 478:1, s. L60-L65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Lyman alpha (Ly alpha) line of Hydrogen is a prominent feature in the spectra of star-forming galaxies, usually redshifted by a few hundreds of km s(-1) compared to the systemic redshift. This large offset hampers follow-up surveys, galaxy pair statistics, and correlations with quasar absorption lines when only Ly alpha is available. We propose diagnostics that can be used to recover the systemic redshift directly from the properties of the Ly alpha line profile. We use spectroscopic observations of Ly alpha emitters for which a precise measurement of the systemic redshift is available. Our sample contains 13 sources detected between z approximate to 3 and z approximate to 6 as part of various multi-unit spectroscopic explorer guaranteed time observations. We also include a compilation of spectroscopic Ly alpha data from the literature spanning a wide redshift range (z approximate to 0-8). First, restricting our analysis to double-peaked Ly alpha spectra, we find a tight correlation between the velocity offset of the red peak with respect to the systemic redshift, V-peak(red), and the separation of the peaks. Secondly, we find a correlation between V-peak(red) and the full width at half-maximum of the Ly alpha line. Fitting formulas to estimate systemic redshifts of galaxies with an accuracy of <= 100 km s(-1), when only the Ly alpha emission line is available, are given for the two methods.
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| 2. |
- Wisotzki, L., et al.
(författare)
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Nearly all the sky is covered by Lyman-alpha emission around high-redshift galaxies
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 562:7726, s. 229-232
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Galaxies are surrounded by large reservoirs of gas, mostly hydrogen, that are fed by inflows from the intergalactic medium and by outflows from galactic winds. Absorption-line measurements along the lines of sight to bright and rare background quasars indicate that this circumgalactic medium extends far beyond the starlight seen in galaxies, but very little is known about its spatial distribution. The Lyman-alpha transition of atomic hydrogen at a wavelength of 121.6 nanometres is an important tracer of warm (about 104 kelvin) gas in and around galaxies, especially at cosmological redshifts greater than about 1.6 at which the spectral line becomes observable from the ground. Tracing cosmic hydrogen through its Lyman-a emission has been a long-standing goal of observational astrophysics(1-3), but the extremely low surface brightness of the spatially extended emission is a formidable obstacle. A new window into circumgalactic environments was recently opened by the discovery of ubiquitous extended Lyman-alpha emission from hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies(4,5). Such measurements were previously limited to especially favourable systems(6-8) or to the use of massive statistical averaging(9,10) because of the faintness of this emission. Here we report observations of low-surface-brightness Lyman-alpha emission surrounding faint galaxies at redshifts between 3 and 6. We find that the projected sky coverage approaches 100 per cent. The corresponding rate of incidence (the mean number of Lyman-alpha emitters penetrated by any arbitrary line of sight) is well above unity and similar to the incidence rate of high-column-density absorbers frequently detected in the spectra of distant quasars(11-14). This similarity suggests that most circumgalactic atomic hydrogen at these redshifts has now been detected in emission.
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