The physical origin of diffuse Lyα halos (LAHs) around star-forming galaxies is still a matter of debate. We present the dependence of LAH luminosity (L(Lyα)H) on the stellar mass (M⋆), SFR, color excess (E(B−V)⋆), and dark matter halo mass (Mh) of the parent galaxy for ∼900 Lyα emitters (LAEs) at z∼2 divided into ten subsamples. We calculate L(Lyα)H using the stacked observational relation between L(Lyα)H and central Lyα luminosity by Momose et al. (2016), which we find agrees with the average trend of VLT/MUSE-detected individual LAEs. We find that our LAEs have relatively high L(Lyα)H despite low M⋆ and Mh, and that L(Lyα)H remains almost unchanged with M⋆ and perhaps with Mh. These results are incompatible with the cold stream (cooling radiation) scenario and the satellite-galaxy star-formation scenario, because the former predicts fainter L(Lyα)H and both predict steeper L(Lyα)H vs. M⋆ slopes. We argue that LAHs are mainly caused by Lyα photons escaping from the main body and then scattered in the circum-galactic medium. This argument is supported by LAH observations of Hα emitters (HAEs). When LAHs are taken into account, the Lyα escape fractions of our LAEs are about ten times higher than those of HAEs with similar M⋆ or E(B−V)⋆, which may partly arise from lower HI gas masses implied from lower Mh at fixed M⋆, or from another Lyα source in the central part.
@article{arxiv.1803.10265,
title = {The dominant origin of diffuse Ly$\alpha$ halos around LAEs explored by SED fitting and clustering analysis},
author = {Haruka Kusakabe and Kazuhiro Shimasaku and Rieko Momose and Masami Ouchi and Kimihiko Nakajima and Takuya Hashimoto and Yuichi Harikane and John D. Silverman and Peter L. Capak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.10265},
year = {2019}
}