English

Ly{\alpha} Nebulae in HETDEX: The Largest Statistical Census Bridging Ly{\alpha} Halos and Blobs across Cosmic Noon

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-03-09 v1

Abstract

The Hobby-Eberly Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) is an untargeted ~540 deg^2 spectroscopic survey of Ly{\alpha} emission in the 1.9 < z < 3.5 Universe. In surface brightness, this survey reaches 1{\sigma} Ly{\alpha} sensitivities of approximately 2-5 x 10^-18 erg s^-1 cm^-2 arcsec^-2, allowing large samples of extended Ly{\alpha} nebulae (LAN) to be studied. We selected a sample of 70,691 Ly{\alpha}-emitting galaxies (LAEs) with an emission-line signal-to-noise ratio greater than 6 and modeled the Ly{\alpha} emission as a point-source component with an optional exponential envelope. Half (~47.5%) of the LAE sample (33,612 objects) exhibits significant extended emission and is best fit by the two-component model. The fraction of resolved sources increases with Ly{\alpha} flux and luminosity. Their isophotal areas range from 10-130 arcsec^2 (median 15 arcsec^2), with integrated Ly{\alpha} fluxes from 6-2000 x 10^-17 erg s^-1 cm^-2 (median 20 x 10^-17 erg s^-1 cm^-2). Comparison between point-spread-function-weighted and isophotal flux measurements shows that the HETDEX pipeline underestimates the total Ly{\alpha} flux by ~30% on average, reflecting the substantial halo contribution in extended sources. Approximately 420 LANs are found per deg^2 over 79.5 deg^2 of non-contiguous sky. About 12% of resolved sources show active galactic nuclei signatures and are bright in Ly{\alpha} and continuum. The remaining 88% span a wide range of morphologies and often lack continuum counterparts. Exponential scale lengths show no strong correlation with Ly{\alpha} flux or luminosity (median 11.6 +/- 1.9 kpc). Only 2.9% of the full S/N > 6 LAE population with ancillary data have radio counterparts, but 64% of those are found to be extended, with the radio fraction increasing with Ly{\alpha} size.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.06410,
  title  = {Ly{\alpha} Nebulae in HETDEX: The Largest Statistical Census Bridging Ly{\alpha} Halos and Blobs across Cosmic Noon},
  author = {Erin Mentuch Cooper and Karl Gebhardt and Dustin Davis and Robin Ciardullo and Chris Byrohl and Chenxu Liu and Maya H. Debski and Óscar A. Chávez Ortiz and Maximilian Fabricius and Daniel J. Farrow and Steven L. Finkelstein and Caryl Gronwall and Gary J. Hill and Maja Lujan Niemeyer and Brianna McKay and Shiro Mukae and Masami Ouchi and Huub Röttgering and Donald P. Schneider and Sarah Tuttle and Lutz Wisotzki and Gregory Zeimann and Sai Zhai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.06410},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 14 figures, 3 tables. Catalog available at https://hetdex.org/data-results/. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, volume 1000, issue 1, article 38. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae44f3