English

Intergalactic Lyman-$\alpha$ haloes before reionization are detectable with JWST

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2024-10-04 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)James \ Webb \ Space \ Telescope \ (JWST) recently reported a large population of UV luminous galaxies at high redshifts, z>10 z > 10, as well as Lyman-α\alpha emitting (LAE) galaxies out to z11z \sim 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\alpha intensity, scattered in the form of Loeb-Rybicki haloes, during the pre-reionization and reionization epochs (z916z \sim 9-16). We forecast the sensitivity and resolution required to detect these intergalactic haloes, finding that individual haloes with LAE luminosities >1043> 10^{43} ergs/s are detectable at a few sigma level at z9z \lesssim 9, while stacking of 10\sim 10 haloes is expected to result in detections out to z16z \sim 16. Finding these haloes is expected to shed light on the neutral intergalactic hydrogen during cosmic reionization.

Keywords

Cite

@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

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:10:18.722Z