The JamesWebbSpaceTelescope(JWST) recently reported a large population of UV luminous galaxies at high redshifts, z>10, as well as Lyman-α emitting (LAE) galaxies out to z∼11. We use the observed UV luminosities along with a data-driven approach at lower redshifts to place constraints on the observability of the intergalactic Lyman-α intensity, scattered in the form of Loeb-Rybicki haloes, during the pre-reionization and reionization epochs (z∼9−16). We forecast the sensitivity and resolution required to detect these intergalactic haloes, finding that individual haloes with LAE luminosities >1043 ergs/s are detectable at a few sigma level at z≲9, while stacking of ∼10 haloes is expected to result in detections out to z∼16. Finding these haloes is expected to shed light on the neutral intergalactic hydrogen during cosmic reionization.
@article{arxiv.2404.18998,
title = {Intergalactic Lyman-$\alpha$ haloes before reionization are detectable with JWST},
author = {Hamsa Padmanabhan and Abraham Loeb},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.18998},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
15 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; version accepted for publication in JCAP