We present an empirical yet physically motivated simulation of realistic Lyman-α emitters (LAEs) at z∼2−3, crucial for ongoing and forthcoming cosmological LAE surveys. We combine an empirical UniverseMachine galaxy-halo model with a simple spherical expanding shell model for the Lyman-α radiative transfer, calibrating only three free parameters to simultaneously reproduce the observed Lyman-α luminosity function and the angular clustering. Our LAE model is further supported by its consistency with other observables such as the Lyman-α equivalent width distribution, the Lyman-α escape fraction as a function of stellar mass and dust reddening, and the systemic velocity offsets. Our LAE model provides predictions for the halo occupation distributions for LAEs and relationship between Lyα luminosity and halo mass, including the distribution of satellite LAEs. Our work provides a crucial first step towards creating a high-fidelity LAE synthetic catalog for the LAE cosmology surveys. We make our LAE catalog and spectra publicly available upon publication.
@article{arxiv.2507.16707,
title = {Simulating realistic Lyman-$\alpha$ emitting galaxies including the effect of radiative transfer},
author = {Hasti Khoraminezhad and Shun Saito and Max Gronke and Chris Byrohl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.16707},
year = {2025}
}