English

Cosmological-Scale Lyman-alpha Forest Absorption Around Galaxies and AGN Probed with the HETDEX and SDSS Spectroscopic Data

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-07-05 v2

Abstract

We present cosmological-scale 3-dimensional (3D) neutral hydrogen ({\sc Hi}) tomographic maps at z=23z=2-3 over a total of 837 deg2^2 in two blank fields that are developed with Lyα\alpha forest absorptions of 14,736 background Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasars at zz=2.08-3.67. Using the tomographic maps, we investigate the large-scale (10\gtrsim 10 h1h^{-1}cMpc) average {\sc Hi} radial profiles and two-direction profiles of the line-of-sight (LoS) and transverse (Trans) directions around galaxies and AGN at z=23z=2-3 identified by the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy eXperiment (HETDEX) and SDSS surveys, respectively. The peak of the {\sc Hi} radial profile around galaxies is lower than the one around AGN, suggesting that the dark-matter halos of galaxies are less massive on average than those of AGN. The LoS profile of AGN is narrower than the Trans profile, indicating the Kaiser effect. There exist weak absorption outskirts at 30\gtrsim 30 h1h^{-1}cMpc beyond {\sc Hi} structures of galaxies and AGN found in the LoS profiles that can be explained by the {\sc Hi} gas at 30\gtrsim 30 h1h^{-1}cMpc falls toward the source positions. Our findings indicate that the {\sc Hi} radial profile of AGN has transitions from proximity zones (\lesssim a few h1h^{-1}cMpc) to the {\sc Hi} structures (130\sim 1-30 h1h^{-1}cMpc) and the weak absorption outskirts (30\gtrsim 30 h1h^{-1}cMpc). Although there is no significant dependence of AGN types (type-1 vs. type-2) on the {\sc Hi} profiles, the peaks of the radial profiles anti-correlate with AGN luminosities, suggesting that AGN's ionization effects are stronger than the gas mass differences.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.05100,
  title  = {Cosmological-Scale Lyman-alpha Forest Absorption Around Galaxies and AGN Probed with the HETDEX and SDSS Spectroscopic Data},
  author = {Dongsheng Sun and Ken Mawatari and Masami Ouchi and Yoshiaki Ono and Hidenobu Yajima and Yechi Zhang and Makito Abe and William P. Bowman and Erin Mentuch Cooper and Dustin Davis and Daniel J. Farrow and Karl Gebhardt and Gary J. Hill and Chenxu Liu and Donald P. Schneider},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.05100},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

26 pages, 32 figures, accepted to ApJ