The Ly-alpha forest in a truncated hierarchical structure formation
Astrophysics
2009-10-31 v1
Abstract
The Ly-alpha forest provides important constraints on the smoothness of the universe on large scales. We calculate the flux distribution along line-of-sight to quasars in a universe made of randomly distributed clumps, each of them with a Rayleigh-L`evi fractal structure. We consider the probability distribution function of the normalised flux in the line-of-sight to quasars. We show that the truncated clustering hierarchy model shows far too many voids along the line-of-sight to quasars compared with the observed flux distribution and the distribution in a Cold Dark Matter model. This supports the common view that on large scales the universe is homogeneous, rather than fractal-like.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9910177,
title = {The Ly-alpha forest in a truncated hierarchical structure formation},
author = {Adi Nusser and Ofer Lahav},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9910177},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to MNRAS