English

Environmental Dependence of Galactic Properties Traced by Ly$\alpha$ Forest Absorption: Diversity among Galaxy Populations

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-03-17 v2

Abstract

In order to shed light on how galactic properties depend on the intergalactic medium (IGM) environment traced by the Lyα\alpha forest, we observationally investigate the IGM-galaxy connection using the publicly available 3D IGM tomography data (CLAMATO) and several galaxy catalogs in the COSMOS field. We measure the cross-correlation function (CCF) for 570570 galaxies with spec-zz measurements and detect a correlation with the IGM up to 5050 h1h^{-1} comoving Mpc. We show that galaxies with stellar masses of 109101010^9-10^{10} M_\odot are the dominant contributor to the total CCF signal. We also investigate CCFs for several galaxy populations: Lyα\alpha emitters (LAEs), Hα\alpha emitters (HAEs), [OIII] emitters (O3Es), active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and submillimeter galaxies (SMGs), and we detect the highest signal in AGNs and SMGs at large scales (r5r\geq5 h1h^{-1} Mpc), but in LAEs at small scales (r<5r<5 h1h^{-1} Mpc). We find that they live in various IGM environments -- HAEs trace the IGM in a similar manner to the continuum-selected galaxies, but LAEs and O3Es tend to reside in higher-density regions. Additionally, LAEs' CCF is flat up to r3r\sim3 h1h^{-1} Mpc, indicating that they tend to avoid the highest-density regions. For AGNs and SMGs, the CCF peak at r=56r=5-6 h1h^{-1} Mpc implies that they tend to be in locally lower-density regions. We suspect that it is due to the photoionization of IGM HI by AGNs, i.e., the proximity effect.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2002.07335,
  title  = {Environmental Dependence of Galactic Properties Traced by Ly$\alpha$ Forest Absorption: Diversity among Galaxy Populations},
  author = {Rieko Momose and Kazuhiro Shimasaku and Nobunari Kashikawa and Kentaro Nagamine and Ikkoh Shimizu and Kimihiko Nakajima and Yasunori Terao and Haruka Kusakabe and Makoto Ando and Kentaro Motohara and Lee Spitler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.07335},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

27 pages, 16 figures, Accepted for publication on ApJ